Well; when RoB came out, there was a lot of protest about 'OP' Corvus armour.

How are people standing on the matter now?

For me, it's certainly a non-problem. The sensory bonus is of course great, and the agility bonus really sweet when flying a jetpack, sneaking around, or dodging. But armour's main job is to stop stuff hurting the wearer, and this is where the suit really comes up short.

Firstly, it's disadvantageous against hordes. You can't dodge them, and wearing Corvus just means taking more damage every time you take hits. Now most of the time I've been damaging PCs with hordes, perhaps 1-5 damage has been getting through with each blow, with an emphasis on the lower end of the scale. So PCs in Corvus have been taking *substantially* more damage from hordes. All the while. Whereas those in meatier armour have been escaping the fray having taken 25% or so less damage, which has been quite significent, because those extra wounds from Corvus are very regularly resulting in more wounds than the Apo can heal.

Seeing as Horde combats are about 50% of my combats, this is a pretty major disadvantage.

Against master-level foes, the difference isn't so great. The Corvus is certainly a better bet against foes with high power ranged weapons which all but moot a point or two of extra armour and need to be dodged, but it's not a major imbalance.

Against elites who typically get 3-8 damage through to the PCs, the Corvus armour means players are struggling after 5 hits instead of 4. The Agi bonus is of little help against melee foes, so the armour is clearly disadvantageous here to a degree.

Where I am noticing a difference is in critical wounds. Those in Corvus are certainly accumulating a lot nastier critical levels.

All in all, I'm seeing Corvus' main advantage to be non-combat and utilitarian in nature: Better jet pack use, climbing, stealth and awareness checks. Although it's an advantage against powerful shooty foes, Corvus is a little worse in the majority of melees than later models, and a rather large disadvantage against hordes.

What are your experiences?

ho, I've only the corvus helmet on my mark7.....and sounds good, also in style

I definatly take more damage than the rest of the group. The other pc with corvus is a devestator who has never taken critical damage due to the way he plays. Not to mention his solo mode gives him 12 wounds. Ive even taken sound constitution 6 times for a current total of 29 wounds and still take too much damage.

I've seen a Blood Angel Assault in Corvus and it was quite nasty.

Agility does lots of things. Jetpack, of course, Assassin's Strike (which is quite deadly), Dodge...You can't say that is moot. Whenever your character (for any reason) gets to have a higher Agi than his WS, then Corvus is equivalent to 10% more chance to evade an attack, which is absolutely lovable.

And it has 2 Histories, which can add up quite nicely, and is never bad

I'm not saying it is absolutely broken, but to me, it really has an edge over the others, seeing its inconvenient compared to its advantages.

Stormast said:

Dodge it utterly moot in horde combat...so yeah... I can say that

Dodge higher than WS only seems to happen to non-melee characters, and those are the types who don't want to be in melee, generally. Everyone else tends to simply pick up a balanced weapon... then mastercraft it.... then master wargear it, if they're keen. That tends to result in WS+30 parry checks, with additional bonuses for hunter of aliens and doubleteam bringing it up to the full +60. You'd be crazy to be dodging instead, unless armed with a two-handed unwieldy weapon (or one in both hands!). Simply; I don't see Corvus as giving any advantage in melee, aside from helping with Assassin Strike and jump-pack piloting - neither of which are game-changers in themselves.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think the original complaints were perhaps down to perception bias, rather than the real truth, and I'm wondering if many others have found this to be the case. I've certainly gone from a place of considering it to be the best, to...well: not!

In my experience, Assaulties really love the corvus because of the "Assassin Strike/More Movement for Me!" Factor.

I think 2 rolls on the history tables, 5 Awareness AND 10 Agility Bonus is too much to offset 1 AP 50% of the time.

I'll problably change it to "+5 agility" but I like the concept: It does what it should do according to other sources.

Siranui said:

Ish and Ish.

In the game I'm playing in I've found the weak corvus chest armour is often moot as many of the more dangerous attacks have 10 or more pen.
Not all, just some of the real killer ones, like I think Genestealers with their extra pen rule, plasma, melta.

Dodging is neat as some things are not parryable, it can help with avoiding big shooting attacks and blasts.
The extra autosenses, history and consequences from agility are generally worth more than the 1 chest armour.

Pretty much it boils down to this, why would you want something other than Corvus?
MkVIII has the massive 11 chest armour, gorget and bonuses to Command/Fel which is pro as.
Horus and MkVII are just bad compared to Corvus. The extra armour on MKVII doesn't happen often enough to really make it worth it.

The way my group is running it, which might be wrong, is that the +10 to agility counts for move and initiative, so for our space wolf assault marine it allows him to be more likely to get first turn when he calls a "Fate point for 10 on initiative".

That said, the psycho follows it up with a bolter assault...

Tunnelhckrat said:

Just curious, did you buy up your Toughness?

in our grp we changed the agi bonus to at bonus for move silent/concelment so the armor only has a -10 penalty. The agi bonus was to strong in my eyes. in particular when the armor history traded the weaker body for the breastplate of a MK8 without the collar.