Fire prism shield upgrade increasing its durability

[Superhooper01]

As some one who has played eldar since retail i just want to shoot a idea in my head for the fire prism. eldar tier 3 is awesome in my eyes. D cannons are great atm and are the best artillery or at least at the top due to damage and range etc. The avatar is something i always get generally due to it being a line breaker and seer council are decent in certain match ups and with support from eldar heroes can be nasty.

I'm not saying the fire prism is a bad vehicle i guess it main role is to dispute units and provide mild fire support which it does well. My thinking is that despite these points it simply cant face off against predator or any tier 3 tank vehicle due to its low health and in my opinion low speed with funny turning.

There are certain weapons, war-gear or abilities that can ripe and fire prism to spreads such as K-nob rocket launcher (seen 3 fire prisms go down in less than a min to a K-nob)
laz cannon predator and av weapons in general 2 shoots rear Armour = dead prism. Ofc u are suppose to keep it behind a wall of set up teams and units but it can be easy to lose track or simply drop micro etc resulting it to be wiped quick.

My idea is simple give the fire prism a shield just like the falcon. Reasons i feel this would be good are that sm pred's, Ork looted tanks and ever races get tier 3 vehicle upgrades and seeing as i feel that a shield will allow the fire prism to tank a bit and stand a chance in a fight. I'm not sure what the falcon shield stats are seems to be very good allowing it to soak up a decent amount of damage maybe this would be to good on fire prism but a shield giving something like a extra 200hp would be good and allow it to use its energy for something.

My little brother often plays the soul-storm Apocalypse mod and they have just added this shield affect to most eldar vehicles which seems to be a positive thing so thats a example of something similar being taken into account

So not demanding anything just sharing a view on something

[Ace of Swords]

The only answer that comes up to my mind is...


FUCK NO

[Aertes]

Eldar vehicles are more hit-and-run specialists than hulks. If you see your fireprisms take several damage... move away with them.

[Ace of Swords]

Eldar vehicles are more hit-and-run specialists than hulks. If you see your fireprisms take several damage... move away with them.

It's not exactly like this, IIRC the FP is slower than other tanks, or atleast it used to be, I think it's speed was sightly buffed in elite.

But I didn't write this post originally because I think everyone who has played against a good eldar player knows that fireprisms are IMMORTAL, there is absolutely no way to kill them, and I mean no chances against a good player, they vastly outranged all other tanks & variations + any other form of AV, and with rangers support(which also have the biggest sight range in the game IIRC) or Farsight you will just get raped by half the map away by FP shots, literally from the fog of war, and like I said if the player is good between shees and warp spiders no vehicles or infantry unit will be able to approach enough without getting wiped.

On the other hand, yes if the player is bad or drops his micro he will lose FPs easily, and this is something I do often, and even then I woudln't want the balance of this mod to cater to bad plays, losing a FP is entirely fault of the player and sometimes might be pathing, it has such a long range, plus it's the only tank that does knockback and has quite an high damage and firerate (infact enough that 2 FP alternating fire will keep a squad on their backs for the 100% of the time they are on the field) unlike other tanks that have to actually risk and get in AV range to get their job done.

[Superhooper01]

Thank u for actually posting a replay thats not u swearing ace:p. I dont think fire prisms are immortal with the right hero war-gear and unit they can be taken out easy but im guessing u have had games were u have played against very good players who kept there prisms alive.

[David-CZ]

The examle of Knob you stated is really an issue of the Rokkit Louncha or what it's called and him being able to infiltrate making an OP combo. He can take out a Prism in 2 shots but he can take out a Pred in 3 just as easily.

I agree with Ace. Ideally your opponent shouldn't even see the Prism itself, only the shots.

The only problem I have is with infiltrated AV units such as Knob or melta ST. Seriously, a unit that has infiltration, AV nade and melta guns. Not much you can do agains a flank.

[HandSome SoddiNg]

Thank u for actually posting a replay thats not u swearing ace:p. I dont think fire prisms are immortal with the right hero war-gear and unit they can be taken out easy but im guessing u have had games were u have played against very good players who kept there prisms alive.

Right hoopah. Prism dying fairly quickly to invisible AV units/Heroes and certainly rear armor hits, its only dependent on Player's micro to keep em alive from a strafing distance ,one wrong mistake Boom 400/125 investment gone. Nvr often u seen Prisms survive long enough till lv3-4 lol.

You suggest a shield ,maybe a lesser upgrade then falcon . On a side note,if they had Falcon shields,they be quite unstoppable with 2-3 Prisms shielded . Though its good way to troll Nobz =D

[crazyman64335]

fire prism's are fine as they are, they're not meant to be tanky, they have godlike range and do very respectable damage. If your fire prism's are dying that's a fault of positioning on the player, not the unit.

[Kvek]

get fp
get rangers-- or just farsight, a good eldar player wont let you kill his fire prisms, here's an example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAA8FRqLiqM. Oh wait, team games!
baby sit it
win game if you give it a shield it'll become even better, and fire prisms alone are worth going to t3
wow, first phase shift now this...

[Raffa]

Let's try to be civil here, eh? Not like we're dealing with a retard here

Fire Prisms already, in my opinion, have such good synergy with rangers (acting as "spotters", if you get what I mean) which lets them do what they do best - hitting hard at long range. Add to this the large aoe knockback on the dispersed beam on top of the damage, and yep you have one ranged superiority vehicle if used carefully.

By its nature, a unit that outranges many of its counters and hits hard, i.e. not getting hit back, is extremely powerful. Now it's flipside is fragility, which means you're more easily punished for making mistakes, as is right for such a powerful unit, therefore it is most effective when it's player doesn't let it get hit, and it can be seriously hard to kill these things.

Taking away it's basically only weakness and not changing any of the Prism's strengths...well I don't think it'll end up in a good way.

[David-CZ]

Like all other vehicles it's downfall is usually pathing. Sadly, not much can be done there.

[HandSome SoddiNg]

Warlock Cloak of shadows can help Prisms on the field & Farseer webway gates

[Superhooper01]

Good points Raffa and Kvek being uncivil is his nature so i just ignore it. And sod i dont want a shield just as good as the falcon that would be 2 good u are right. its just when i compare the fire prism to a sm pred i see this:
laz pred with Armour upgrade vs fire prism= no contest. I know the fire prism isn't meant to be used similar no way just it has no upgrades and go's down in seconds. Ace says good eldar players will generally keep fire prisms alive and hes right, however i see plenty of players lose them in a snap. If u watch a game on max power channel (no disrespect to LT Ekul hes a great player) a eldar player loses 4 fire prisms in the space of a minute, yes he drops micro but he still had units in front to shield them and yes Knob did take out 2 but still they are slow, turn funny and cost a fair bit and with no speed boost, shield or any ability to save them or allow for a chance to escape or withstand and sort of av damage i fell they will always under-preform tbh

[sk4zi]

i think if you half the damage of a fire prism and remove its awesome disruption, you can double its HP and have just a tank like all the others....

so if anything a shield upgrade should reduce the FPs damage significantly.

[Torpid]

They withstand an infinite amount of AV damage by being longer ranged than anything other than lascannons - which they can knock over ad infinitum.

[Kvek]

hooper, what about you stop talking about me, and instead focus on the topic?
You just compared an artilery vehicle to a battle tank, that says all doesn't it? anyway, plenty of eldar players=?

[Torpid]

Plenty of players also lose their sentinels in t1, buff sentinels, give them SHI!

[Superhooper01]

OK Kvek so long as u stop insulting me and making me sound like a idiot. ive already made my case and said i dont want a shield as strong as falcon im simple stating that it is easy to take out and loses to ever tier 3 vehicles can be killed by certain war-gear due to it being slow unprotected and have no abilities or ways to escape.

[Kvek]

The problem is, how do you answer to a non-researched opinion from a player who doesn't have any experience with eldar?

[Superhooper01]

Kvek i main Eldar and chaos come on i know we dont play together anymore but before i got elite i played them all the time, im better with them than orks and sm lol.

[Jazz-Sandwich]

The problem is, how do you answer to a non-researched opinion from a player who doesn't have any experience with eldar?

As some one who has played eldar since retail

Literally the first line of the OP.

At any rate, you should answer it the same way you ideally answer every other question: address the content of the post and leave perceived insults out of it.

My little brother often plays the soul-storm Apocalypse mod and they have just added this shield affect to most eldar vehicles which seems to be a positive thing so thats a example of something similar being taken into account

You must first understand that you're taking an example from a wildly different context. In UA, the shields were added to maintain relevancy in a T3 (or was it T4, in UA, again?) unit when there are titans stomping around.

The difficulties you've observed arise from the cheese that is a rokkit launcher KNob, which I believe to be the crux of the point. Otherwise, fire prisms seem to be in a good place.

[Torpid]

I'm sure kvek was shortening things for the sake of brevity, but he probably intending to mean "experience at a high level playing eldar" as experience in and of itself is useless unless it is good experience. You can rush 2 tzeentch marines with the PC for 6000hours if you want and it won't indicate your very good. Similarly if you have played eldar for thousands of hours but are still unable to deal with enemy tanks with your fire prism you've clearly got either a micro problem, or a macro problem (you need to understand fire prisms don't straight up counter tanks and that you need other units to deter the tank so that the prism can become a hard counter to it).

[Kvek]

+1 Torp.Hooper, you play 3v3s, you have basically NO experience with 1v1, and if you played them in retail it means nothing, main them in 1v1 and then I shall take your posts seriously, but if you did that you would change your opinions about phase shift and crap like that...

[Superhooper01]

yeah the example of soulstorm mod was a bit random true, just wanted to give an example of were it has worked. Its true in 1v1 im a bit of a derp on tbh but i still play them for fun but i guess u have a point of me not being a high level 1v1 player. So maybe i will go try eldar in 1v1. still feel u are being bit petty especially being hostile towards my phase Armour post which i felt was made for good reason but il drop it. I think the knob owning peoples fire prisms in replays was a factor for me making the original post but also just seeing sm preds get health and av damage upgrades... wait it think all tier 3 tanks get upgrades now that i think about it lol but not the fire prism .