I hear for various players online that Empyreans are over tuned. I have my ideas of how to balance the factions, but I would like to know what others think about toning or rebalancing Empyreans.
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Empyreans main issue is Antecessors Eternal. It is hard to see a reason to take any other squad (price aside), other than a paragon to get the champion.
They are a grab bag of the best stats and abilities available to squads, seem to do everything, and only cost 1pt more than average.
Outside that, I think slightly above the curve, but there is risk of sledgehammering too hard unless you can pin down why. One issue is other factions first wave squads are probably below where they could be, which can make it hard to pin what âthe curveâ is.
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The main issues with empyreans are a) easy access to line of sight ignoring weapons, and b) antecessors are very difficult to interact with beyond just killing them.
Thereâs a few minor things that are overtuned as well, but I think a light touch is necessary here. They have solos that are cheap and durable, this is less of a big issue to me, but you could likely reduce the def of the factotum and fulcrum to 2 without hurting their gameplan much, same goes for aurelion. The sentinel I think is fine, itâs hard to play against but it represents a substantial investment of arc and without hitting the chronomorphic accelerator it struggles a bit against high arm at range. If I were to tone down anything it would be to make quantum anchor only affect slams or repositions, but not both.
To address the main points, I think the phase trajectile cannon should have to spike to ignore LOS, keep ignore cover as a charge because otherwise itâs a bit marginal compared to the antiminator, but it should cost something to make use of ignoring LOS like the harbinger cannon for ISA does. It also reduces the arc available to a sentinel that wants to shoot behind walls so represents a meaningful choice.
Second main thing, the antecessors, theyâre a swiss army knife in a faction of specialists, and are good at nearly everything. You need a rube goldberg machine to prevent them from activating, which is pretty complicated for certain factions to deal with, namely marchers with their limited access to non-cypher null or cryo lock effects. Iâd propose removing arcanum module and you could also reasonably replace weapon expert with reflex accelerator, let them be monsters if you put in resources but if anyone needs to be limited by reflex accelerator itâs these guys. That way the empyrean player has to commit resources to turn them into combat terrors, and they can be safely cryo locked or null colliderâed to blunt their offense. It also has the handy side effect of making do I slip displace into a real choice.
With these changes empyreans get to keep all their tricks and flexibility, but lean a little harder into very specialized but strong at what they do sort of design space that I think they were intended to live in. I also think it gives the empyrean player more to consider turn to turn while still keeping the strong plays intact, it just means they have to commit limited resources to doing those things.
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That makes sense. I like to the each faction should have weakness and Emps should be resource heavy to make them effective or reliant on arc to be effect. This makes then strong but stuggle with furies. Null effects would also be a weakness.
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I see this claim made a lot (probably by the same people, just in different places), but looking at the stat cards, I donât understand why itâs being made. I see four LOS-ignoring effects in the faction, two of which are for cyphers. Why is â3% of all the weapons considered âeasy accessâ?
The percentage of weapons with the rule isnât what matters, itâs the frequency of use. If youâre not seeing warjacks with phase trajectile cannons be happy, but 2x ptc is a standard loadout for all empyrean warjacks in my meta. With relatively easy access to charging empyreans have it can be extremely warping because you canât place any support solos within 16" of an empyrean warjack for fear of them getting blown off the table, even behind buildings.
By way of example, ISA I would consider to be a faction with easy access to null effects, they only have 3 weapons that actually have null, but theyâre used frequently enough and on models you would take anyways that you see them in every list (yes every list simply because of the weaver having one). Setting the goal post at âmost weapons have this ruleâ or even âa large minorityâ for âeasy accessâ is silly.
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I get what you saying, pretty much how I feel about Hollowphage cannon and Railgun, the feel like stables.
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Great example, when considering the AC matchup you have to take into account the hollowphage because of the outsized influence it can have on their damage output and how easily corrosion can be applied with it. If you arenât then youâll be in for a bad time when the AC player draws aggression theorem and blows up the heavy you thought was safe.
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Thereâs a reason I regret posting responses to any of these threads, and I need to remember it next time. 
The idiosyncratic experiences of âIâm one of the two people who ever play against Empyreansâ players out there does not mean these experiences are universal. âIn my meta, nobody ever takes anything else besides these weapons, therefore it needs to be fixedâ doesnât necessarily follow, you know?
These threads follow a hugely predictable pattern due to the fact that the player base is so limited: broad declarative statement about how X is bad and needs to be fixed A #1 top priority, agreement from the same literally one or two people each time, consensus is reached, and any dissenting viewpoints that other experiences are relevant are dismissed.
So: skip it. Forget I said anything. Carry on!
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To be honest Iâm just trying to keep some degree of player engagement to the game. Fishing for opinions. I was thinking of email PP feedback team on changes in the faction squads and how to merge them better with Cadres.
I think youâre right that youâre seeing a bit of an echo chamber due to the small player base. Buuuut⌠if you want the player base to grow, you have to look at exploitable options and overtuning like they are discussing here. You arenât going to get/retain players if one of their first experiences with the game is getting rofl-stomped by one specific faction. Theyâll either buy into that faction to not consistently lose, or just not buy in.
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More for engagement for the already exsisting community. I doubt new comes would check these forms, and some engagement is better than no engagement.
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For what itâs worth, I donât think empyreans are a free win by any means, and in my experience of running tournaments for this game for the past 3 years ISA are actually doing better than them, but I think thatâs mostly because we only have a couple active empyrean players. ISA are also absurdly strong off the back of eschatonic well, gatecrash and aysa drace, Iâd put them near equal with empyreans in power level despite having some dud units. I have some thoughts on ISA but theyâre harder to tone back without crippling their gameplan, maybe add a rule that eschatonic well and gatecrash canât be used in the same turn?
For empyreans itâs more the ânegative play experienceâ of antecessors and ignoring LOS. They can be played around currently but that requires a lot of experience and knowledge of the game mechanics that new players wonât have. For example you can cryo lock antecessors if you have a non-cypher null, you have to cryo lock them first, then strip the arc before the end of your turn. There is counter play, but itâs harder to find than say, against marchers.
In general what would do the most good is bringing some of the weaker units/ weapons in line to encourage list variety more, empyreans included. For example, the saber units are pretty outclassed by aeons, to the point that double cadre is likely better than taking any sabers even in primary. Making havoc engine a little less conditional would go a long way, maybe trigger it on damage instead of destroyed. Some of the weapon options are just outclassed too, metaperceptor takes up a weapon slot for a benefit that works best with lots of weapons. Iâd give it a crappy Statline like RNG 8 pow 3 so at least you arenât losing out on an attack to get +2 rng. These are just a few examples but improving internal balance would be great for all levels of play, tone down the crazy stuff, bring up the mediocre stuff.
Honestly, for a first version of any game the balance is astonishingly good, faction by faction they feel pretty even. Empyreans and ISA are probably the strongest, with AC following closely behind, MW are struggling a bit right now but they have strong enough stuff to be contenders, they just have to work a bit harder.
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In my experience, Empyreans are probably OK, except for Antecessors. They are clearly, ridiculously, broken.
Personally, I agree on PTCs too, and if I played Emps Id windmill slam 2x PTCs in every jack I could. In fact, I did exactly just that when playing demos and small box games, and it was really strong. But I sold my starters to club mates to get them in the game, so no more Emps. But PTC jacks are really kinda ridiculous. Cant hide from them, which is an issue in a game thats 100% scenario.
Thats just what Ive seen and experiened. We now have 3 local Emp players, and wrapped a league up. So Im pretty confident in the antecessor assessment. All the new players started auto-taking them once they saw what they do, and it was an immediate issue, even facing them in the hands of brand new players. Antecessor rules design feels like a 13 year old wishlisting up a favorite unit.
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Make their units into 5 model units.