Faith Abilities Cost toomuch?

[phoenixzs]

Hi there

I have a complaint with faith abilities;

Although early abilities such as lay on hands is quite acceptable late abilities for confessor and cannoness seems to cost too much in my opinion.

My argument is that if we compare it with other hero abilities most of them have a A)Recharge B)Research cost and of course if you are not dark eldar you have to build the hero unit.

But although I find the abilities no that quite powerfull then the others the SOB abilities have cost they have research and they have an additional faith cost which takes a lot of time to gather and get deplet and required additional investment in your LPs(Firts one is nothing but the others seem to get you annoyed with the additional powercost).

The most annoying part is not to be able to use tier 3 Main hero ability without a faith cost.Orbital bombardment is also for example tier 3 ability but costs nothing compared to 85 faith points of canoness.

I dont know you guys but everytime a grey knight or a sorcerer or a hemolucus casts its spell when they come out of the box I feel a bit mocked.

So what do you think?

[terlanis]

to be honest you really shouldnt feel that way. First off, by time your tier 3 you should have as many faith banners on your lps as you can. Also there is research that adds to faith recovery/bonus in the confessor building that ya build in tier 2. Another thing is when you reach tier 2 any "sergeant" leaders you add to squads adds to faith recovery. All of these things are standard techs/ must gets that you really shouldnt ignore anyway when playing. If ya do all these things you should have plenty of faith to do what ya want to do. Another thing to look at is there overall power vs other armies units. Forgot the name but the golden bolter ability is freaking awesome for faith cost/ availability (can have 3-4 units all doing it at same time). No other unit in the game can say the same. The missionary heal spell early in the game is a game breaker in tier 1, completly tipping the balance in most fire fights. All in all its a balance issue that makes it fair, without the faith resource being where it is sob would be way overpowered.

[Hopit]

And if they would cost to less... that would be murder against other races...

[Rotlung]

You can't spam multiple Faith abilities very quickly because of the high cost, but you would accumulate Faith quickly enough to use other abilities. The high cost is to prevent you from throwing too many Faith abilities around in a very short span of time.

[Maktaka]

The reason Faith abilities cost Faith is because they are universally incredible. Consider:

Divine Retribution on a Sister Repentia Squad will do more damage to Fire Warriors (25 DPS) than they can do to the Sister Repentia Squad (under 15 DPS), and the SRs don't even need to hit them.

Avenging Angels can kill a Daemon Prince and still have 10 seconds to spare. They can also charge straight through the aforementioned Orbital Bombardment thanks to their high mass and invulnerability, ganking the Force Commander on the other side (they're faster than him).

6 Emperor's Touch Bolters, still a rather low amount to get in a squad that the ability is used on, will kill a Tau Commander in 10 seconds. 10 Emperor's Touch Bolters, a reasonably sized BS squad, can kill an Archon with 4 Incubi, Retinue Enhancement 1 and 2, and Leader Health 1 (basically, a full health tier 2.5 Archon squad) in just 16 seconds.


The only arguably weak Faith ability is Emperor's Wrath on the Confessor, but this is likely because the Confessor himself is such a monster in melee right out of the gate and has access to Holy Edict at the same time (cheaply research the ability while he is built and you'll have them both when he first spawns). Were Emperor's Wrath any better, the Confessor could easily stun, splat, and mop up nearly any infantry squad in the game all on his own every two minutes.

[steel_tomatoes]

Why I think the Confessors wrath ability is somewhat less potent than other faith abilties

Wrath is also very easy to use and doesn't require any support from the rest of the SoB army. It is good for insta gibbing lightly armored enemies like fire warriors, guardsmen, reapers or scourges. Other abilities aren't so simple, they work in conjunction with an army. Emperors Touch is no good if the squad is likely to be tied up in melee. So you need good support atleast another 2 squads around the squad doing the Emperors Touch. Holy Edict rarely works from my experience (same bug as chains of torment etc - except worse in my experience). But when it does work, its useless if you don't have a heavy bolter mass to cut down the frozen squad.

To be perfectly honest I sympathize with the OP to an extent, because you very rarely see the T3/T4 faith abilities. I bet a lot of mid level players have never even seen one or more of them. Personally I might use avenging angels in a 4v4 if my team has more or less won and I have the luxury of building up holy icons and teching. But Divine Retribution...never see it. Avenging Angels...never see it in a tight game.

The main reason for this is that in a tight game you don't realistically have 5 LPs upgraded with holy icons. You are lucky to have that many points on a lot of maps, and regardless of how many points you have, in a close game, you are frequently losing/rebuilding Listening posts as parts of your base come under attack. Since the final Holy Icon is the most expensive to build, and is always the first to be destroyed, it is very risky to build all 5 holy icons in a close game. Typically I would get 3 holy icons so that I can use emperors touch, purifying light and the confessor abilities. And with a few faith producing units on the field, I rarely need more "faith store" then 60 to use those abilities, due to their recharge time.

Would I change anything? I wouldn't touch the faith cost of any abilities for the reasons outlined by others. But what I might change is the cost of the final 2 holy icons. It is currently too risky to build them in a close game because if any holy icon gets destroyed, the cost of replacing it will be equal to the cost of building the last one. I would suggest either:

How I would balance the faith system

-Cap the cost of the holy icons at the cost of the 3rd icon (you could reinsert that cost into the research of Divine Retribution and Avenging Angels)
-Leave the cost as is but make them free to rebuild if destroyed

[Rotlung]

Wrath seems to affect all armour types, whereas Smite doesn't. Against infantry, Wrath is superior to Smite except against the 2 extremes of Infantry Low and Commander, which usually aren't numerous enough to be worth smiting.

It's really good for what it costs.

[aaglo]

In the end game I've found out that the faith powers are really awesome. The counter fills up quickly, and emperor's touch bolter is murderous against everyone (so it seems). So I don't think that the powers cost too much.

[DocNemo]

It's not that it costs too much regarding its regen time ; the cooldowns are quite long anyway. It's the high Faith Cap needed that is problematic : on small maps vs a competent oppenent that will harass your LP2 (really easy to destroy with, for instance, an upgraded reaper squad by Eldars, or Chaos bombers, or what have you), I find it hard to keep 4 up and running, if even 3.
Each time they get one of your LPs, you lose massive Req and power rebuilding the LP and the Faith icon ; the increasing cost, especially on rebuilds, is ridiculous. Also add that you'll lose 20 faith along with 20 max faith (if you had 60/80, you'll get to 40/60 I think), and the ability to use some powers in order to defend the strategic point you lost.

3 faith icons is easy to manage, since there will usually be that many strategic points close to manage. 4 is harder, because it's usually the number of points you'll have (4/8, your share of the map), and so one will most likely be pressured. 5 is almost impossible, because you need both map control and the power to maintain it (so as to protect your LP). What does it mean ? It means that you will have 60 max faith if under heavy pressure, allowing several LoH and happy confessor use, but only one Emperor's bolter which is one of the biggest T2 advantages the sisters can get IMHO ; you will NOT be able to use Ascension (85 faith) and divine retribution (70 faith), both which are powers that are arguably game turning and your only options against fast ranged (5 tie-ups with angels) and overwhelming troops (you're playing SoBs).

Even if you had 4 faithed LPs, you're still at 80 faith cap, meaning you'll get almost successive Emperor's (nice), and get to use divine retribution on SrS and LoH (nice) ; that gives quite a boost against heavy vehicules, but at the price of having half map control, meaning you can't get overpowered in the beginning game (hence dont expect no comeback from faith powers)



On the other hand, in multiplayer games with easy points, you can spam the Faith Powers all day long, wrecking havoc (5 tie-ups with angels, one stunned squad for 15 sec, blind another squad, smite another, oh my) ; which is nice considering late SoBs do not really have a powerhouse unit (except 2 frail walker, and that's 2 when the unit cap doesn't bug on me).



If I could change something, I'd probably change the max faith to 80 and decrease all faith acts to 80% of their original cost. That means everything's avalaible with 4 LP, allowing some breathing room if you have 5.

[steel_tomatoes]

I agree with the above assessment (similar to what I said?). Having Holy Icons max their capacity out after 4 isn't a bad idea. The only problem with doing that (and reducing the faith cost of each ability) is that you buff up the T1-T2 spells, so for example LoH now only costs 12faith and believe me thats a signifcant boost in T1 when you probably just have the canoness generating faith.

I would tweak your idea to instead of having faith max out at 80, and having the ability's faith cost reduced, you could make each holy icon store 25 faith, and change nothing else. So you only need to build 4 holy icons to get your 100 faith store. This would be a simpler solution than the idea I suggested in my last post.

[PandaMine]

The main issue with Faith is it doesn't float (unlike Soul's) and because of that it will be a bitch to balance

[steel_tomatoes]

If it floated you could potentially use a whole heap of abilities at once. I know you can do this with dark eldar, but i think the SoB abilities are just a little bit more potent.

No doubt people would be complaining if you could chain together edict + wrath + emperors touch + purifying light etc

[Arkandea]

If it floated you could potentially use a whole heap of abilities at once.

Can you imagine Battle Sister Squads with Lay Hands, Emperor's Touch and Divine Retribution? That would be the pinnacle of ownage

The fact that it doesn't float encourages more aggressive attacks from SoB, I think that's by design.

[Heathen]

Two squads touched by The Emperor are enough, thank you.

I recently played a lot of SoB and I have to say, they are awesome. If you have enough faithful units and banners, your Faith will fill up very quickly. So casting 2 Emperor's Touch, waiting a moment, casting heal, is quite possible and really powerful.

I'm mostly a SP player, but if my experience with the Tau Stronghold told me anything, SoB's faith abilities are teh pwnz0ring. Apart from them, I only had an easier time with Imperial Guard doing this level.

[phoenixzs]

Two squads touched by The Emperor are enough, thank you.

I recently played a lot of SoB and I have to say, they are awesome. If you have enough faithful units and banners, your Faith will fill up very quickly. So casting 2 Emperor's Touch, waiting a moment, casting heal, is quite possible and really powerful.

I'm mostly a SP player, but if my experience with the Tau Stronghold told me anything, SoB's faith abilities are teh pwnz0ring. Apart from them, I only had an easier time with Imperial Guard doing this level.

If this is not a 1vs1 match in multiplayer and is indeed a game aganist comp it's hardly a valuable comment.

But overall nice discussion.Still protecting LP's and increasing cost is a good things to be pointed out.

Plus;I feel dark eldar abilities are very potent,I would as say equal to SoB.Also hero abilities dont cost anything also.So I have to disagree on that with some other poster above.

[Heathen]

Well, it's true, I mostly play SM online and don't have much experience with the other races. But playing against the CPU with SoB provided me with some insights into their potential nonetheless.
And I daresay getting 3 banners up is possible even in a 1vs1 match, which will allow you to get 1 Emperor's Touch + 1 Healing Hands easily. Already very powerful.
I get the feeling that the SoB abilities are more powerful but on a smaller scale than the DE abilities. So all in all it's quite balanced I guess.

[DocNemo]

Sometimes I feel as if the Faith icons were like Waaagh banners, except in the middle of the map and with weaker guns.


On a side note regarding Faith icons and LPs, BS have easily one of the worst map control : weak capping unit early / no independant (like cheap sluggas) capping unit late game, pricy and highly upgraded LPs you lose even though you can't afford to, and totally useless defenses on those LPs.

Compare it to orks with fast capping speed, mass capping units, cheap LPs, built-in defenses... I won't even compare cheap early wartrack and 250 power Immolator.


I try to be very careful before I scream imba, but seriously - Orks are easy mode compared to SoBs. If the SoBs player doesn't have his counter down, he will lose : flamers early against numbers, Canoness to counter BigMek and tie squads, quick celestians to counter Wartraks (it takes 2 to ruin a fully equiped SoB army), good use of Faith heal to hold despite the map control disadvantage early, and later Faith bolters to crush and hold ennemy's LPs.
If you only show one opening, you will lose LPs and maybe even a point, and be flooded by orks, losing your crucial Faith powers in addition to req generation.
Meanwhile, a good ork can control the critical location on larger maps, because he can afford to spread some squads while you just can't (solo missionaries are a joke), giving him an unecessary edge.

To conclude my rant, Faith power are both a needed tool and a huge weakness ; it means that you need LPs, it means that you can't lose your LPs and it means you must keep your missionaries in your squad (and not solo capping). Also, losing missionaries due to random fire is a real pain, as it can force you to retreat due to lack of Faith acts.

EDIT : I feel missionaries should be much stronger, HP and damage wise, even if their cost had to increase a little, and move much faster. The canoness also need some kind of regen, because once the early game is over, she's canon fodder. Any tips on the Blind faith are welcome, I just can't figure how to use it efficiently. Since this thread is about Faith powers, I won't touch the SoB range, though I dare say it is pitiful (hi Taus).