Cheekie Monkie wrote:Hellstar makes a good point, the burden of proof is on the accuser, not the accused. If someone claims X unit is op, then it's that person's prerogative to prove his claims.
That having said, I do want to ask what Hellstar's standard of proof is.
First off, thanks for your well-written post.
My burden of proof is reasonable, and depends on the context (the claims being made and how they are being made). The more outrageous the claim, and the stronger and more "in your face" the claim is, the stronger my burden of proof is. If I have seen few or no examples of the claim, the stronger my burden of proof is. If I have seen obvious counter-examples to the claim, the stronger my burden of proof is. If it is also claimed that I have to prove that their claim is false, but they don't have to prove that it is true, well....
If someone says that the game is overrun with GK terminator spam that must be reeled-in, well, I've never seen any terminator spam of any kind. Ever. The claim has all four hallmarks I described above of needing some sort of proof. It is outrageous, made strongly and "in your face," I've seen no examples whatsoever, and I've seen counterexamples (i.e. no terminator spam). Would it be too much of a burden of proof to, well, actually see some terminator spam, vs. just having to accept that it exists?
If someone says paladins are nobs, avatars, and terminators all rolled into one and thus constitute an "I win button," well I can go through the same analysis as above but I think you get the picture.
I'd like to encourage you to re-read what Torpid said...
I have no problems with it and never challenged any of it. He simply made factual statements as to the features of paladins (retreat, shockwave, etc). I didn't see anything that offended my sensibilities and experience, like a single paladin squad being an "I win" button, or hordes of paladin spam overrunning the game, so....
In short, they're despised because they're an anti all unit which have few counters apart from throw your entire army at it and hope for the best - in a game which is derived from unit synergy and rock papers scissors.
I played a game just today, against imperial guard. I got into tier 3 and managed to build a total of 2 paladin squads and 1 terminator squad. These were never on the field together so did not constitute a "spam." The paladins were killed twice and the terminator once, in trying to go after a leman rus. I'd teleport onto it and hack away while his guardsmen repaired and the rest of the army plus leman rus fired at me. If I targeted the guardsmen and slaughtered them, the leman rus took out the paladins/terminator, and if I ignored the guardsmen and targeted the tank, the guardsmen could out-repair the damage (or, at least repair it enough).
I lost that game despite getting out a total of two of these monstrously OP paladins, and a terminator. Then I went to Idris's channel and noticed two new vidoes I hadn't seen of the new patch. I watched one of them - a 3v3 where one side had two GK players. They got out these monstrously OP paladins and terminators, and even had multiples deployed on the field at once. They lost.
Again, some of the claims just seem hyperbolic to me, when I see all these counterexamples of the claims, and little to no examples backing them up. If paladins are as OP as people say, then most if not all of these examples would be wins vs losses.
I wouldn't have a problem with people backing off the hyperbole and simply saying they have a "sense" that paladins might be overperforming and might need looking into.
EDIT: Just saw your comment above regarding the imperial guard. Yes, that was my experience in the game described above with 2 paladins/1 terminator. Any semblance of map control was quite difficult for me to claw, he had huge swarms of guardsmen, he had TWO sentinels bullying me from the start, etc. Finally, the game stats showed that I bled him tremendously while taking relatively few losses myself. The stats were entirely lopsided in this regard, yet he still won.