is incorporeal a bad defence?

[Angelshard]

@Ludvig I'll agree with you that incorporeal in itself probably doesn't equate bad stats, looking at will'o wisp it has fine stats for a 3ss model. I guess it's because I started playing Pandora and just saw my models melt away. It seems that the later books gives it a more realistic value.

I still stand by my claim that as a defensive ability incorporeal is starting to get dated and I'll agree that armour is the same, both are worse than just having higher stats, there's is just too many ignore reduce attacks in the game now.

Where I think armour is stronger than incorporeal is that it also works on blasts, pulses, conditions, auras and all types of attacks.

That is still quite a lot more and leaves (in my eyes) incorporeal as the worst defense. 

 

[Ludvig]

@Angelshard

I largely agree. That it doesn't work on dynamite pulses from Loco and such is really strange and far too many attacka ignore all defenses so you are often better off with better stats.

You know blasts and pulses get reduced if they originate from an attack using sh or ml? Blast isn't a separate attack type just a specific way of measuring who is affected by the attack. That it doesn't reduce damage from abilities and terrain is really strange though.

[Myyrä]

20 minutes ago, Angelshard said:

That is still quite a lot more and leaves (in my eyes) incorporeal as the worst defense.

It isn't quite that black and white. The worst defense is actually no defense at all, which in Malifaux would translate to Df 1, Wp 1 and Wd 1. The best ability for increasing the survivability of a model depends on all of its other abilities, including damage and whatnot.

Even if we forget damage, game role and whatnot for now, the defenses still interact with each other in interesting ways. High defensive stats benefit from increase in defensive stats much more than low defensive stats. Model with high wounds usually benefits more from gaining HtW, incorporeal or armor than model with low wounds. A model that already has armor +3 would often benefit a lot more from gaining HtW or incorporeal than one more armor.

[Angelshard]

@Ludvig guess my brain left the room for a second, yeah I did know and somehow managed to write it anyways...

 

@Myyrä I agree that there's a lot of factors when looking at how survivable a model is and, as you say, some models will benefit mire from one kind than another.

But if you look at a model like teddt, who has impossible to wound, terrifying 13, regeneration +2 and 11 wounds, he's still considered rather fragile for 11 stones because of his defense 3. I guess he could take more back when it was only book one and two, but by now he goes down fast.

[Myyrä]

1 minute ago, Angelshard said:

 

@Myyrä I agree that there's a lot of factors when looking at how survivable a model is and, as you say, some models will benefit mire from one kind than another.

But if you look at a model like teddt, who has impossible to wound, terrifying 13, regeneration +2 and 11 wounds, he's still considered rather fragile for 11 stones because of his defense 3. I guess he could take more back when it was only book one and two, but by now he goes down fast.

Teddy is relatively fragile for its cost, sure. That doesn't make impossible to wound, terrifying or regeneration bad abilities though.

[Ludvig]

@Angelshard I know that feeling.  

[Angelshard]

I agree, all three abilities are quite strong, but it's not enough to compensate for a low stat and that was my point.

A lot of the incorporeal models suffers from the same issue.

[Myyrä]

8 minutes ago, Angelshard said:

I agree, all three abilities are quite strong, but it's not enough to compensate for a low stat and that was my point.

A lot of the incorporeal models suffers from the same issue.

Yeah, I said the same thing earlier in this thread. However, it isn't only incorporeal that's having this issue, and it doesn't automatically make incorporeal a bad ability.

[Angelshard]

I agree, I guess it has just been more obvious to me with incorporeal than the other abilities. 

[hydranixx]

Is Incorporeal weaker than it used to be? Possibly. Almost all defensive mechanics grow weaker with each release. Should we buff Incorporeal? Eh... I would say, resoundingly, no. 

Viewing Incorporeal as primarily a defensive mechanic, that also happens to slightly boost your mobility, is a mistake in my opinion. I think it's more accurate to describe it first and foremost as a way to ignore terrain and models entirely while moving, and then, about half the time, halve your incoming damage. When it sometimes neuters a big Severe or RJ Ml/Sh damage spike, count yourself lucky but remember your model is still made of glass.

The option to simply elect to walk through models, Ice Pillars or entire buildings without penalty makes it situationally many times more valuable than Armour or other comparable abilities. For example one of our local boards is literally an enormous mansion with 20+ rooms and a multitude of corridors, while another is a fully Enclosed cave prohibiting Flight, Leap and models ignoring LoS from ignoring the walls. In these boards Incorporeal is the strongest basic ability in the game.

Not all metas have boards with such plentiful terrain, but it's important to remember boards are meant to be set up with 30-33% ish terrain. If your meta is using less than the recommended amount one could argue you're not playing the game as intended and you're never going to get the value you deserve from Flight or Incorporeal. 

[Vorschlag]

2/3 - 3/4 should be 66%-75%

[NulSec]

Strictly speaking it is not just a defensive ability. It is a mobility ability too. To compare to other defensive abilities doesn't seem like a valid comparison. Armor has one use.  That said, I never feel like incorporeal is reliable for defense and I never select a model based on them having it. It's nice to have, but I wouldn't plan on tanking with it. 

[anencephalous]

I think that most of the problem lies more with Cast attacks, not Incorporeal defence. Cast attacks are almost always better than Sh and Ml. There are so many counters to Sh and Ml, but so few to Casting. I think Counterspell and Beyond your Magic should be common enough that chosing between a Ca attack and a Sh attack should warrent an actual moment of thought. At the moment, all other things being equal, you always take the cast attack.

In the next iteration of the game, I would like all Ca actions to have inbuilt suits, and Counterspell to be on lots more characters. That way you could cast the spell, but only with the correct suit. Powerful spells could have two, like lures. I also think all Ca attacks that do damage should have gun symbols (except maybe a few very special ones, like masters).

 

[Ludvig]

I think Ca should be a lot less about damage than it currently is. Sonnia's fireballs may be magic but the damage should probably be physical. Streamlining attacks into physical and magical and making magic mostly be non-damaging effects would be interesting. The stats could be kept to differentiate attacks but effects could be given the traits physical/magical on top of that.

[Zebo]

In fact, it seems that the Incorporeal models have lees wounds that they should. In the Shifting Loyalties's campaign rules you can make one of your models incorporeal, but then you must reduce its wounds to half. 

[Ludvig]

42 minutes ago, Zebo said:

In fact, it seems that the Incorporeal models have lees wounds that they should. In the Shifting Loyalties's campaign rules you can make one of your models incorporeal, but then you must reduce its wounds to half. 

I think the campaign upgrades are generally overpowered when compared to normal rules and upgrades.

[Myyrä]

On 10/29/2017 at 2:17 PM, Ludvig said:

I think the campaign upgrades are generally overpowered when compared to normal rules and upgrades.

They are generally terribly balanced. Most of them are expensive and quite useless, but few are totally bonkers.

[Kaos]

I have mixed feelings on incorporeal. I feel like is a good ability on wrong models, since it's generally placed on models with low Wk. If a incorporeal model was fast enough, it would be a nightmare to catch it in the open, while he zip trough walls and terrain while placing scheme markers. A scheme runner with incorporeal and let's say, don't mind me, would be absolutely bonkers.

[Ludvig]

32 minutes ago, Kaos said:

I have mixed feelings on incorporeal. I feel like is a good ability on wrong models, since it's generally placed on models with low Wk. If a incorporeal model was fast enough, it would be a nightmare to catch it in the open, while he zip trough walls and terrain while placing scheme markers. A scheme runner with incorporeal and let's say, don't mind me, would be absolutely bonkers.

Insidious madness... I'm very glad there aren't too many custom built scheme runners with incorp. It gets really overpowering with proper terrain.

[Palooka]

Getting away from the "Hungering Darkness pity party" - I do think that Incorp is fine but sometimes models are overcosted to "pay" for it. Sorrows being chief among them - with their super low df and wp combined with the low wounds and incorp, they die to a wet fart. (I'm aware that Martyr is a thing - but I think they should at very least have as many wounds as they cost in points)

Insidious I feel like you're paying for a) the ability to summon them easily with Dreamer and b ) the silly silly movement 7 and df6. I don't think they're overcosted even as hires.

All in all, I'm fine with Incorp - but I think some models either need to get cheaper or need more wounds to make up for the high number of things that now ignore the rule.

Al.