Which of these is more durable?

[Valkyrion]

 

T4, W2, 3+ save

T5, W1, 3+ save

T4, W1, 2+ save

 

The answer is, of course, 'it depends', but assuming you don't know what you are facing which is generally accepted to be better - wounds, toughness or armour?

[MARK0SIAN]

Increases in Toughness are given out much more sparingly for general infantry than extra wounds or a 2+ save so I would guess the designers think that one is more valuable. That change from T4 to T5 affects an awful lot of attacks that target the model and makes them almost immune to instant Death from double strength weapons. 
 

In truth though, I think there’s just way too many variables. If you averaged it out I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised that each one of those options was the better choice in exactly 33.3% of situations.

[General Zodd]

Given how frustrating it is for the Artificer Armour Sergeant to bounce all the AP3 shots, I’d say, in the absence of AP2, armour is best. Now, T5, W2 and 3+ is probably bestest due to the prevalence of S8/9 weapons able to instakill T4 W2+.

[Marshal Mittens]

A lot of the things that pen AP2 also instant death T4, like Lascannons, melta, and power fists. I think that T5 is overall stronger, of the choices, because of that. Also lots of T4 weapons, which T5 is a lot stronger against. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

The answer is unfortunately it depends lol.

 

The very best weapons like the lascannon, thunderhammer, and multimelta don't care about any of those stat spreads, so you do have to break it down a bit further.

 

2+ armour obviously deflects ap3, but that in itself is more rare, as it was stripped from many ranged weapons (battle cannon, earthshaker, flamestorm, storm cannons, etc...). Against what's left like missiles or adrathic, you absolutely do want a 2+ over the other two.

 

But I think the math works out for t4/2 wounds being better than than the other two in every other scenario, except where there's an instant death trigger baked in somewhere.

 

[SlickSamos]

Tl:dr in the majority of cases against T4 & 2W is more durable than the other options, T4 & AS2+ often comes in second and is only better than T4 & 2W against AP3, meaning T5 & AS3+ comes in third (only outperforming the others against S2 weapons!).  However in many cases none of them outperform a Tactical Marine when facing off against Anti-Tank weapons.

 

All this analysis assumes no Invulnerable Saves or Feel No Pain saves and compares the three cases' durability against a baseline Tactical Marine.

 

Both T4 & AS2+ and T4 & 2W are twice as durable (take half the damage) as the baseline Tactical Marine against most small arms and basic close combat weapons.  Whereas T5 & AS3+ are only take a third less of the damage vs S4, take half damage vs S3; and counter intuitively get less good vs higher strength weapons.  So there is no difference when up against the trusty Lasrifle, all are twice as good than vs a Tactical Marine.

 

For weapons with Breaching or Rending: T4 & 2W will still be the best, taking half the damage compared to the baseline Tactical Marine; T4 & AS2+ will do a lot better against Rending (6+) taking just under half the damage of a Tactical Marine than Rending (4+) where the AS2+ starts to feel pointless; T5 & AS3+ depends a lot on the strength of the weapon rather than the number in brackets, e.g. vs Banestrike rounds they are a third tougher than the baseline Tactical Marine whereas they get killed by Plasma just as easily.

 

Krak missiles are really the only case where AS2+ is the stand out option, taking half the damage compared to everyone else as.  Whereas with lower strength AP3 weapons (e.g. Power Maul or Lance) having 2W is just as good as having AS2+.  T5 & AS3+ performs really poorly in this situation only slightly outperforming Tactical Marines (see comments about small arm fire)

 

Lascannons and their ilk kill everyone equally so that analysis was easy

 

This means that both the Lascannon and Lasrifle kill all three cases at an equal pace which shows how amazing Lasrifles are!  (This message is brought to you by the Departmento Munitorum)

 

Edit: a few more thoughts...

The effectiveness of T5 goes up hugely with a second Wound as it impacts instant death provide by nearly all Anti-Tank weapons. 

 

E.g. the change in Bikers stats from T5(4) (which means they are T5 but count as T4 against instant death weapons) to a straight T5 between 5th and 6th edition caused a huge meta shift in Space Marine builds in 40k especially in w.r.t. how HQs were outfitted (i.e. suddenly loads of biker HQs appeared) and this carried over into the previous HH edition with a disproportionate number of them being on bikes.  I suspect that to make this edition a bit more diverse they removed the +1T but this has caused an issue on the basic biker dudes where they are now very fragile for their points (though equally one could argue that it's their points cost that is wrong not their profile).

 

Alternatively having a second wound couple with T4 & AS2+ is amazing vs small arms fire (4 times more durable than a Tactical Marine) but against all Anti-Tank weapons they still die just as easily...  

 

Of the two (T4, 2W & AS2+ or T5, 2W & AS3+) I would prefer my HQ having T5 and AS3+ as it improves their survivability in a Thunder Hammer duel (however then the meta would shift to a Power Maul or Charnable Sabre duel if every had access to this option...).  But outside of that, it's really a lot harder to analyse than the original three cases presented as it really depends on whether you are facing lots of small arms fire or lots of Anti-Tank weapons.

 

T5, 2W & AS2+ is a big problem though from a game balance perspective as it has no real weaknesses.  And hey guess which unit is the biggest problem right now (for their cost)?  Oh yeah the one unit type with higher toughness and more wounds than that backed up by an invulnerable save .  The reason that stat-line works in 8th / 9th edition is mainly because they got rid of instant death if S>=2xT and added in a damage value to each weapon profile.  

Edited April 15, 2023 by SlickSamos

[Dont-Be-Haten]

So what you're saying is we need more Pride of the Legion lists? >:3