TimeField

[Dark Riku]

Time-field is not a no brainer wargear. In 1v1 it is inferior to both other armours.

Then it won't matter if it would get nerfed for 3v3 purposes

[Kvn]

if we remove the cancelling ranged attacks thing from Time Field, will it be fixed?

That would render the wargear useless. The main point of getting it is to stop a selected unit from being able to shoot and limiting their maneuverability, thus ensuring that your/the Eldar player's stuff doesn't get shot to pieces in a big T3 fight. It would be like removing the damage from the Emperor's Wrath and leaving it as pure disruption.

I personally see Time-field as filling in too many roles. I understand that it's tier 3 and that it's expensive. But it's a no-brainer wargear. given that it does three things.

1. Slow targets, from a good range.

2. Cancels ability use, for a good 10 seconds( according to the online codex).

3. Cancels ranged and melee attacks.

That's just cheesy. Each of those in their own right is a powerful ability. Yet this wargear combines all three. This essentially takes out a unit from doing anything for 10 seconds, worse if a blob is caught.... How is this justifiable?

You can walk out of it. This isn't a total lockdown of your entire army for ten full seconds. This is a disable for a targeted area that slows you by 40% while you're in the radius. As soon as you leave, your units go right back to fighting at full strength. You don't stand around in an Immolator or in front of a suppression team. You shouldn't try to wait out the Time Field either.

everything you have listed was changed because it was literally unable to be avoided once the situation had been set up". That's about as perfect a definition of something that swings player agency too far in the wrong direction as I could have come up with. It absolutely is an I-win button. Sure if you just use it and follow it up with nothing then it's just a delaying tactic. Unless you're desperate that's a poor way to use it. You follow it up with other things. It's usually a death sentence for vehicles when you don't use it in a vacuum. "It was unable to be avoided once the situation had been set up". Can you deny that it's frequently combined with singularity and eldritch with frequently devastating effect?

Sigh. I had a long message to answer your answer your statements, but the computer decided to delete it all. I'll try to redo it in a condensed version, but I'm really not up to retyping the whole thing right now.

See above. 40% slow =/= immobilized. You can walk out of a Time Field. Can you deny that Sorc Warp global can be a death sentence for vehicles when pulling in Plague Marines/Lascannon/etc.? How about Melta-troopers? You would be retreating from the Singularity/Eldritch in most cases anyway. Adding in the cost/energy of the Time Field just ensures it.

My proposal implied nothing about price. I deliberately did not include numbers at all except for the slow description. It was not a fully realized proposal. I was looking for feedback on whether people thought the idea at its core was viable before adding concrete numbers. I was also hoping it would spur discussion about how we could make TF better.
I do not share your view on how underwhelming it would be. Such an ability would give you extra time to dodge a grenade, time for melee units to close in on a suppression team as no team suppresses in one burst anymore. Melee units would get more attacks in and thus a greater chance for specials. It would allow units to win stand up fights that they otherwise wouldn't. More time to kite AV for vehichles. More time to gain advantageous positioning. Such an ability would be extremely powerful and not in anyway like a lesser suppression.

That's why you have to include all facets of a proposed change. If you don't mention something, there is no choice but to assume you don't want it changed.

It is literally weaker in every way. Why buy a late-game wargear when you can get Rune Armor a tier earlier for cheaper with the added bonuses attached? You have bigger things to worry about in T3 than a grenade spike, and your Farseer really doesn't want to be in the middle of an enemy army and disabled while they can still shoot back.

The two are not mutually exclusive. And even if they were, so what? Caeltos will make his decisions as he sees fit. I have no problems with that. He's generally done pretty well so far.

I play mainly 3v3, something that I've made no secret about before. "Oh but your opinion isn't valid/isnt worth as much now". I watch plenty of 1v1s and while my skill is lesser in that mode due to lack of interest, I am familiar with it. And the reasons that TF are bad are independent of mode. Problem is exponentially worse in 3v3 than 1v1 due to the nature of the mode. The elite mod prioritizes 1v1 play. But it does not do so at the cost of, or with no regard to the other modes.

Please refrain from insulting assumptions. I never condemned team games or their validity. I was asking a simple question that needed a simple answer.

I would greatly suggest you play more 1v1. I'm not a game-mode purist by any stretch of the imagination, but when you only play 3v3 you miss a lot of strategic information that you need to play against things like this. In team games, turrets and Time Field can look obscenely good. It isn't until you play against them in a different context that you learn their weaknesses and how best to counter them. Don't take a single view as fact. Try facing off against it in all the different scenarios, seeing how others use/combat it, and then decide.

The core of why we are disagreeing seems to be because I think TF could be made better in terms of design and implementation and thus result in better play experience while you do not seem to want to see any possible ideas to make it better.

The reason why we're arguing is because you want to nerf the Time Field across the board on the basis that you feel it's too strong. There has already been a thread debating this a while ago, and people seemed to generally agree that the wargear was in an alright place. Once again, playing 1v1 will give you a much better idea of how to counter it, and those skills will carry over in a big way.

Asmon, you say it is inferior to the other armors in 1v1 (I am not disputing that statement). Would, you mind sharing your thoughts on TF in 1v1? Why it's subpar, what's good and bad about it?

I can't speak for him, but I would guess that it has to do with the fact that Time Field often won't hit more than one or two squads of a properly split army. Compared to a momentary disabling, the durability of Armor of Fortune, or energy of Rune Armor (especially with Spiritual Rights) is a much more appealing option at times.

[Asmon]

Armor of Fortune is the best one for the durability indeed, but beyond that Fortune is an excellent ability that keeps scaling the whole game and works on every unit, just as Guide does.

Rune armor is beast against swarmy races and will ensure that FS keeps spamming abilities at 1 every 10 seconds rate, even if she is low level.

Armor of Asuryan costs 50 power which is more expensive than a d-cannon, and only gives a flat hp bonus on top of Timefield. The ability alone is inferior to Fortune in most cases but a vehicle chase. Then again if you already have the tools to kill a vehicle you should buy a d-cannon or wait for something better, you shouldn't buy this armor. And if you don't have those tools, Timefield won't harm the vehicle, and doesn't slow enough to make eldritch unavoidable, except against Land Raiders.

In a nutshell: you get the Armor of Asuryan for the sole purpose of killing LR, considering you got eldritch available.

[Tex]

Or you get it with runes of reaping to spam an AOE debuff on your enemy, forcing him to have very awkward large engagements...

Sounds like you are almost saying that this wargear isn't badass Asmon.

[Asmon]

No, I'm saying that in most cases I've already got an armour by the time I hit T3, and then I scarcely feel Timefield will do better for me than every other option available.

[Cyris]

I don't have a ton of value to add here, but I won't let that stop me. TimeField IS awesome, but the other 2 FS armors provide a lot, so it's infrequent that I'm naked in T3. Fortune lets her tank/tie things up in T1 and buffs shees nicely all game, and psychic storm grants all the energy you could ever want - AND an ability. Eat your heart out Apo

That said, I've had games where I get just Doom in T1 and Reaping in T2, and find that it's enough. Normally I'd have picked up Fortune already with that combo, but sometimes the timings don't work out, or I have enough control and map pressure to skip it. Having TimeField as a T3 option in a situation like that is really strong, depending on the enemy composition. It's a bit like that FC that stays naked till T3 then goes Termi - it happened cause his opponent didn't pressure enough.

I think TimeField could get nerfed a bit and still be useful in 1v1, though a lot of the nerfs I've read in this thread are excessive. The problem with it, if anything, is how well it works in 3v3. But lots of other commanders/factions have wargears that are balanced in 1v1 but get out of control in 3v3. So eh? I'd be really bummed if it was nerfed out of 1v1 to make it balanced for 3v3, when we can all easily write lists of OP nonsense 3v3 brings.

[Toilailee]

I never understood why this ability prevents both abilities AND attacking? It 100% counters and allows free kills of all superunits and terms, usually tanks too.

[Aguxyz]

I never understood why this ability prevents both abilities AND attacking? It 100% counters and allows free kills of all superunits and terms, usually tanks too.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[Lichtbringer]

I never understood why this ability prevents both abilities AND attacking? It 100% counters and allows free kills of all superunits and terms, usually tanks too.

I am biased, but Eldar severly lack any stuns that other races have, which are the prefered method for killing terminators. So I am kinda fine with it being a good option against Terminators.

Let's make a deal, we change/nerf Timefield and then Mindwar stuns instead of supressing^^ (but that's probably just me).

[saltychipmunk]

units in time field should take substantially less damage.

i can feel the lack of eldar stun pain (though haywire nades are still pretty damn good at ending the life of a tank)

but an aoe ability cancelling movement impairing shooty stopping wargear that has a huge area of effect and an even larger cast radius is too much. this has always been the issue with these top end eldar wargears .. they do too much as compensation for short comings else-ware . buff the elsewhere if you must but nerf time-field . it has too much concentrated in one ability.

wouldn’t mind mind-war stunning or getting a generic slow like crippling poison thing is would be an effective all counter to pretty much every hero .. forever. I would rush cheese it for pretty much every match up if it gave stun.

[Thibix Magnus]

But hey there is no way to consider an ability internally OP, as I understand it. The only way to measure that would be to consider farseer an OP commander which is something I absolutely never heard of. We can consider something un-fun, independently of faction balance (though legitimate) but that's a different question, and a rather subjective one..
So I don't really understand how this topic is evolving, there is so little mention of faction and cross faction balance, and would like to learn more about that. My most friendly 2 cents

[Kvn]

units in time field should take substantially less damage.

Then what would be the point of buying it in the first place? Should Emperor's Wrath lose its damage since it can wipe squads in the blink of an eye?

can feel the lack of eldar stun pain (though haywire nades are still pretty damn good at ending the life of a tank)

Spiders often pay for it with their lives given that they have to jump in near T3 shooty armies that tend to evaporate them with their measly hp pool. They're not always a practical option, especially not for the purposes of AV snare.

an aoe ability cancelling movement impairing shooty stopping wargear that has a huge area of effect and an even larger cast radius is too much. this has always been the issue with these top end eldar wargears .. they do too much as compensation for short comings else-ware . buff the elsewhere if you must but nerf time-field . it has too much concentrated in one ability.

The radius isn't as large as some people seem to think, and you can still walk out of it. This is a T3 50 power wargear that can be mostly negated by smart positioning. Eldar trickery is one of the only things they've got going for them in the super late game. Their recovery mechanisms are exceedingly poor given they have nothing in T3 which is a durable, standalone unit, nor do they have general purpose replacement squads for lost ones. When it comes to the point in the match where there are two sides bunkering down, the Eldar need something to have a chance of competing, and artillery spam isn't going to cut it if you don't have a force to act as a meat shield.

That's where the abilities come in. Warlock Providence, WSE delaying wargears, and FS Time Field help to act as a buffer so that the Eldar force doesn't just get shredded. Warp Spider Exarch stun was over the top and nerfed because there was literally nothing the player on the receiving end could do once they were caught. With Time Field, you can still either walk out or retreat if you need to.

mind mind-war stunning or getting a generic slow like crippling poison thing is would be an effective all counter to pretty much every hero .. forever. I would rush cheese it for pretty much every match up if it gave stun.

It wouldn't have any real effect though. The only thing that would change would be that the CL/HT/BC could be hit by it now. The wargear by itself is still a bit unimpressive, and, while useful in certain situations, has to fight with Spirit Stones and Runes of Reaping, both of which are excellent in their own right. It certainly wouldn't counter heroes any more than it does right now.

I also don't see how that would counteract the Time Field nerf, if it were to need one, which, in my eyes, it definitely doesn't.

[Broodwich]

I find it amusing that the ones usually arguing this needs to be balanced around 1v1 are currently arguing about nerfing something deemed unnecessary in 1v1 but is OP in 3v3

[Cyris]

I find it amusing that the ones usually arguing this needs to be balanced around 1v1 are currently arguing about nerfing something deemed unnecessary in 1v1 but is OP in 3v3

FWIW, there is NOT consensus that TimeField is unnecessary in 1v1. "Unnecessary" is also such a loaded term too... Timefield is a useful and worthwhile ability in 1v1, that does it's job when needed and seems reasonably balanced internally. The cost is high, both in resources and oportunity costs paid by not using the other two awesome armors in earlier tiers. There is clear counterplay in 1v1, but it's power to force difficult decisions on your opponent cannot be ignored.

If it's toxiclly busted in 3v3 and needs nerfing, sure. I would suggest focusing on rebalancing it instead of straight nerfs - there are ways to weaken it's 3v3 impact while simultaneously making it more useful in 1v1. Like: move it to T2 for cheaper, but with a weaker power (like, lose the weapon deactivation and reduce range a bit, or keep the deactivation but remove the speed penalty, or whatever)

However, as mentioned before, there are a number of T3 wargears that are not often seen in 1v1 that preform quite well in 3v3. Perhaps there should be a drive to rebalance/nerf all T3 wargears, to make sure they don't overly impact the game? Or maybe not. What do ya'll think?

[Thibix Magnus]

However, as mentioned before, there are a number of T3 wargears that are not often seen in 1v1 that preform quite well in 3v3. Perhaps there should be a drive to rebalance/nerf all T3 wargears, to make sure they don't overly impact the game? Or maybe not. What do ya'll think?

I will try later to find a way to better explain what I meant previously in this thread. For the emerging balance part, the link with Eldar additive weaknesses in T3 and scaling issues ...

Meantime, strictly about general tier re-balance for wargear, I would just say that shifting Tier performance would be a very strong move in the Design domain, not only balance, so it means it is not a question of optimality but a modder or collective political decision about immersion. And one that is very subjective, emotional, and rather legitimately so. I personally love Eldar for their hero-centric T3 game, and this trait has been tuned down already in several ways (mainly giving to other factions T3 stuff that I love too). And I love DoW2 for the balance it found between crazy stuff and, well, balance. Now someone could legitimately prefer an overall move to make factions equally good in all tiers, but that would lose a lot of spice in the game for me (just a personal view) and also quite a headache to balance against factions that lack T3 wargear for good reasons, as some don't need this stuff to scale in T3... I feel it's quite a mikado to do (less personal view).

The best words I found to express what I think of strong abilities are here, minute 30

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD6Z2YF6N0Q

(Spelling edits)

[saltychipmunk]

mind mind-war stunning or getting a generic slow like crippling poison thing is would be an effective all counter to pretty much every hero .. forever. I would rush cheese it for pretty much every match up if it gave stun.

It wouldn't have any real effect though. The only thing that would change would be that the CL/HT/BC could be hit by it now. The wargear by itself is still a bit unimpressive, and, while useful in certain situations, has to fight with Spirit Stones and Runes of Reaping, both of which are excellent in their own right. It certainly wouldn't counter heroes any more than it does right now.
.

stun does way more than suppression.

certain commanders can still shoot while suppressed, all units can still melee while suppressed , you can still use abilities while suppressed heck you can still kind of move while suppressed .. sure not very fast but if all you need to do is crawl into heavy cover being able move even a little is nice.


stun just stops you. no abilities , no movement , no shooting , no melee , nothing . and you would be surprised how painful being stunned is for heros that aren’t really used to it . it is why crippling poison is so darn good vs warboss, Cl and HT. because they just cant deal with it.
heck it would be effective to snaring super heavy units too like all terminators

but i was really just going off of the previous dudes tangent. honestly id rather just see time field nerfed. period. no strings , no side buffs. As others have said the other wargears are better than it is in other smaller scale situations. the issue is largely its team game cheesy poofness.

if there are other things that need buffs, they should be buffed because they need a buff, not as some compensation for fixing time field.

[Thibix Magnus]

team game cheesy [poofness]

I ... would say that's a redundancy, but that's just me
[insert corresponding name: poofness, blobofdeathness, A-movingness, beaconess, plasmacanoness, w/e]

[Kvn]

stun does way more than suppression.

certain commanders can still shoot while suppressed, all units can still melee while suppressed , you can still use abilities while suppressed heck you can still kind of move while suppressed .. sure not very fast but if all you need to do is crawl into heavy cover being able move even a little is nice.


stun just stops you. no abilities , no movement , no shooting , no melee , nothing . and you would be surprised how painful being stunned is for heros that aren’t really used to it . it is why crippling poison is so darn good vs warboss, Cl and HT. because they just cant deal with it.
heck it would be effective to snaring super heavy units too like all terminators

but i was really just going off of the previous dudes tangent. honestly id rather just see time field nerfed. period. no strings , no side buffs. As others have said the other wargears are better than it is in other smaller scale situations. the issue is largely its team game cheesy poofness.

if there are other things that need buffs, they should be buffed because they need a buff, not as some compensation for fixing time field.

The only hero that can shoot normally under suppression is the Plague Champ. Since suppression multiplies reload time by something like 20x, by the time they finish reloading, the Mind War has already run its course. Stun would change very little in that regard.

You can still move while stunned, you're just very slow.

You don't use Mind War to win a melee fight. You use it to keep unit A from reaching unit B. In that sense, a stun would actually be worse since it wouldn't stop the dangerous melee squads such as Stormboyz and ASM from ganging up on your suppression team seeing as it only targets one model. The rest of the squad would operate as normal.

Except that Crippling Poison doesn't root the squad using it in place for the duration. Mind War does. It's not a bad ability by any means, but it's certainly not going to outshine what is arguably the best heal in the game, or the RoR in most situations. Making it a stun wouldn't really change that.

Using Mind War with its relatively short range and channeling requirements in T3 to try and catch out something like Terminators would be a near death sentence for the Farseer.

Then what, exactly, should a Farseer player do in the late game when the opponent has out a bunch of sturdy, hard hitting squads and vehicles? The brittle Eldar T3 army requires you to either have perfect squad preservation throughout the game, or pull out some strong combos with hero wargears. There's a reason the Warlock is considered the weakest Eldar hero in the late stages. Straight nerfing Time Field because it looks OP in a vacuum is not a good balance decision to make.

[saltychipmunk]

vacuum? what part of a 3v3 arena is a vacuum to you? its not a vacuum. we know exactly when and where the problem is.

the lock is weak because his good points were nerfed , not because he never had good points to begin with. if he was unnerfed we wouldn’t be talking about him much .

[Kvn]

vacuum? what part of a 3v3 arena is a vacuum to you? its not a vacuum. we know exactly when and where the problem is.

A vacuum in that the reasoning behind Time Field isn't being looked at, not in that it looks at 3v3. I apologize if I'm mistaken, but as far as I can see, most of the arguments against it so far have been along the lines of "it does *this*, *this*, and *this* to the enemy army, therefor it's OP." That doesn't take into consideration the purpose behind it in the Eldar roster, or why it was designed that way in the first place, which is something I've tried bringing up already.

Just for example, a Carnifex would appear heavily overpriced in a vacuum. It's got a hefty price tag of 600/150, and still needs an upgrade (costing either 150/50 or 100/35) to really shine. For any other faction, it would be a crazy investment, essentially as much as a super-unit, but the Tyranid eco allows for multiple of them to hit the field relatively quickly. In context, it isn't overpriced, and has in fact been nerfed in the past due to performing too well.

the lock is weak because his good points were nerfed , not because he never had good points to begin with. if he was unnerfed we wouldn’t be talking about him much .

Warlock was always considered the weakest late-game Eldar hero to the best of my knowledge, even in retail. Might just have been the people I talked with at the time, but I think I recall an interview with a player who went over it either on Indrid or Harlequin's channel back then.

[saltychipmunk]

Warlock was always considered the weakest late-game Eldar hero to the best of my knowledge, even in retail. Might just have been the people I talked with at the time, but I think I recall an interview with a player who went over it either on Indrid or Harlequin's channel back then.

nah, that was wse for a very long time.

lock was powerful because his early gamewargears were strong enough to be useful even in end game. like his witch blade doing spike single target damage (and a shitload at that) and that aoe special almost one-shotting low hp squads made it dangerous for the whole game.

while wse and fs technically had more powerful end game options , the locks strength was that his early game options were so stupidly good that he was pretty much already kitted out and viable going into t3. that is what offset his lack of any exotic t3 exclusive wargear (besides providence).

now that his early game options are nothing more than a shadow of themselves he now lacks that one crucial perk that made up for his lack of .. well phase armor and time field . his early game stuff is comical in how bad they scale now

That is an issue of relic/ cale's own making. it fixed some problems true but .. well now we have the community complaining about the locks lack of late game viability .

[Lesten]

As I see it the purpose of the Time Field is to slow down the enemy army to give the Eldar, notoriously bad in prolonged engagements, some breathing room and stop them from being shot to pieces for a few valuable seconds. It's not really meant to be an offensive tool IMO.

I'm gonna be narcissistic and quote my earlier suggestion for changes to the timefield (with some edits):

• Units in Time Field take less damage from ranged weapons (make it less strong in combination with Wraithguard and Eldritch). (Including the Farseer.)
• Units in timefield take more damage from melee (will only apply to the Farseer herself, since she's the only one who can attack, so it would have to be a pretty big damage increase to have some kind of impact). (Or just boost the Farseer's melee damage for the same duration.)
• Turn slow back to 50% (from 40%?) if above changes were to be applied (to compensate a bit for the reduced ranged damage and to help the Farseer get in to melee with units in the field).
• MAYBE also reduce cast range slightly, but then the armor should give slightly more HP (+50?) to the Farseer to help her get into range (which is already not all that easy).
•I wouldn't really be against allowing abilities inside the timefield, but NOT targeted abilities (like jumping, but abilities activated on themselves could be used, like ATSKNF). But if that change was to happen then the Time Field could slow or completely halt the cooldown of abilities for units inside (would only be 10 seconds anyway).

(This would allow for some inventive uses too, which would be fun and suit the Eldar design, while not being a death sentence for blobs refusing to retreat.)

[Lost Son of Nikhel]

Totally theorycrafting here, but... someone has thought on a Timefield rework, to change it into a more support ability (which fits with Farseer rile) instead of the "lol fuck you" ability which is ATM?