Commissar_Badass wrote:xerrol-nanoha wrote:That's not the case at all, any dedicated melee or jump melee squad would be able to force them off easily. Giving them power melee and melee resistance would simply allow them to threaten certain heavy infantry squads like purgation squads or tzeench chaos marines, along with heavy infantry armor setup squads.
They would still handily lose to assault marines or raptors, to say less of any hard melee like khorne marines or banshees.
To that end, it would simply widen reinforce the roll of Rangers as an anti-setup team unit, but simply allowing more tools to perform that role, and allowing more versatility toward later T2 and T3 where sniper squads in general lose effectiveness.
Wut? Why would you give a dedicated sniper squad better chance to better excel at melee with power melee? They already do more damage than all the other setup teams (barbed strangler warrior brood being the only exception) in melee - why do they need to excel even more versus HI units? They can cloak, peg off a unit with a snipe and then, if you feel it necessary for some strange reason, have them close in for melee with a setup team and they will probably win because of their melee dps.
Though at what point would you ever want to expose such a weak squad by closing up to enemy lines is beyond my understanding. They're perfectly fine where they currently sit, and the swords are there for whatever reason- just because they have some weapons doesn't mean we should adjust them to fit a melee role.
I'm not trying to say you should use them differently, or that the way they are used now is wrong. I'm simply saying that adding options to a 1 dimensional unit that loses strength in the late game would be fine.
Stealth melee is a wasted opportunity for Eldar, although there are methods to cloak banshees, i'm not talking about an a dedicated melee arrangement, instead that Rangers, which have swords already, should be good enough in melee to defeat types of squads that have no melee aptitude at all: such as other setup teams and dedicated range, including but not limited to purgation squads, devastators, havocs, tzeench marines, dark reapers, and lootas.
I'm not trying to say Rangers should be a dedicated melee or that melee be a primary role, but instead that it should be a situational option as apposed to an act of desperation. The swords are already there, so I feel they that rangers should be decent at using them.
I will reiterate that making it power melee wouldn't make rangers OP, as they would still lose to any heavy infantry with even the slightest melee aptitude, such as strike squads, CSM, etc not to mention jump troopers like assault marines or interceptors.
I would go so far as to say that by not making Ranger swords deal power melee, you give balance preference to factions with an overabundance of heavy infantry (space marine, chaos, grey knights) as the point of Rangers is to fight setup teams universallly, regardless of their armor type; But I won't pass any judgement about your clear preferences.
In actuality, my main concern isn't even that Rangers get power melee, even though I think that would be fair, My concern is that Rangers, whom already have swords, should therefore qualify for melee resistance aura - which they currently lack.
In not having melee resistance aura, I would say that having normal swords functions as an unnecessary weakness, and that those models could equip shuriken catapults in the same way that guardian weapon teams and Distortion cannons do, as well as scouts and every other space marine setup team equips bolters.
And that's that. You can say OP, but while I would acknowledge an increase in overall unit value and potential, I wouldn't see how adding alternative choices to a unit increases its total value. To say that Rangers would overpowered with melee resistance aura is like saying that Banshees are OP because they now have aspect of fleetness IN ADDITION to aspect of strength when all it does it change the choices that can be made.
