Postby Eerie » Wed 15 May, 2013 5:36 pm
Oh wow, and IG thread : o. Suddenly I feel the urge to write something.
To begin with, there are good matchups and bad matchups, but that is more reliant on a player playstyle/preferences and a lot of bias coming from that way (yes, yes, everyone's biased one way or another). ALSO 1v1 and team games play out differently and changes made towards improving one of them might fcuk up another. But to the real point - just as Lag mentioned, IG transitions kind of poorly into t2, considering gm being a fine repairing squad and perhaps an 'ok' dps squad with commie and plasma, but that would work against heavy armor only. Sentinel is probably the only thing keeping ig alive in t1, gaining missles in t2, cool, but they tend to work well against other blobby-ish races/factions, perhaps a setup team spam. The mentioned av works 'ok', but is not nearly sufficient enough to stop any transport vehicle, you need a hard av in order to do that. Chasing do not happen so often, because it's very easy to force off a retreat, with any aoe and if there's a chimera, it's gonna end up in a standoff or one side making a big mistake during an engagement. Still, I don't mind sent being as it is, just don't call it a better thing then it is in actuality. Spotters are ok, but they're only a disrupting squad, with a farily low dps, while catachans serve pretty much the same purpose, perhaps a light melee counter (very light) aswell and detection, but that's about it. What IG lacks in t1 is a thing to power through a medicore/strong ranged blob, because melee (except for jumping squads perhaps) was never really a problem. Riku, you've mentioned that IG can go for a heavy t1 - sure, every race can, but with that poor transitioning it actaully works to it's disadvantage. The real dps and tanking possibilities, even the line-breaking comes in t2 and t3, the later - the worse, no matter what. Also, considering that IG's t2 isn't the cheapest around (hence it's strength), delaying it too much is just asking for getting stomped. This is a dilema every ig player has to face in every game. Risk getting shut down in t1 or risk getting shut down while transitioning into t2.
But the real question is - is that really imbalanced? Every race/faction has it's weaker periods during the game, the reall matter is - how can they deal with then and aren't they getting shut down too hard during them. Just as my personal opinion it all comes down to how t1 was handled, did the ig player overmake squads/overbled, did the power got shut down? Most of those things (well, in most cases) can be dealt with. The only small or slight disadvantages ig has (remember, that's my opinon) are matchups against chaos and eldar (perhaps space marines in late game), but first one I think applied for a long time, while second plays out around the fact, that ig doesn't have the mobility and cannot split to deal with eldar map control well.