Editing Grav-Weaponry (section)

=Tabletop=
===In 7e===
Grav-guns are something of an alternative plasma gun in terms of use. It has [[MEQ]] and [[MEQ#TEQ|TEQ]] killing potential comparable to plasma, without the chance of blowing up and if they stand still they get a extra shot. However, this comes at the cost of shorter range (which is further shortened by moving due to Salvo) and a weakness to light armour which makes them worthless against Guardsmen, Ork Boyz, and the like. Because of this grav-guns are best used at mid to short range, prioritizing heavy units to get the best use out of them. Also capable of tearing through vehicles when used in large numbers via hull point stripping that can be argued to both ignore a vehicle's cover save and deal two hull points worth of damage for every six after the first.

Essentially, grav guns are meant for killing the big, tough units in an enemy army while leaving the fodder for the rest of your army to handle.

Unfortunately, as a consequence of high RoF and AP values combined with a simply peerless anti-vehicle capacity, grav-weapons, specifically grav-cannons for space marines, single handedly shattered the relevance of vehicles in 7th edition. Statistically, a grav devastator squad pays approximately 51 points per glance for any armour value, where lascannons pay 60-210 points over the ranges of armour 10-14.

===In 8e===
8e addressed the above by smacking grav-weapons hard with the nerf bat; they now have S5 AP-3 D1, and Graviton has been replaced by increasing the damage to D3 if it wounds an enemy with an armor save of 3+ or better. Between the stat changes, the removal of glancing/penetrating hits and AV, the buffs 8e gave to all plasma weapons, and the pitifully short range grav-weapons have when compared to said plasma weapons, they've been relegated to anti-heavy infantry roles (and even in that niche plasma is better most of the time).

===In 9e===
9e has once again shaken up the Grav/Plasma balance. While Grav weapons have seen a shift to a flat D2, Plasma has been hit by a trio of indirect nerfs:
* The arrival of [[Eradicator|Eradicators]], which are both extremely powerful and ''criminally'' undercoated, makes Plasma less point-competitive for tank-popping
* The general shift of Space Marines of both flavours to 2W, meaning you MUST overcharge to have a shot at killing, combined with...
* The change in how modifiers work with Gets Hot triggering on unmodified 1s and reduced access to rerolls, make overcharging much riskier.
Grav and standard Plasma have the same AP and to-Wound versus MEQs, with the critical difference that Grav actually does enough damage to kill. Against overcharged Plasma their to-Wound is slightly worse but without risk of blowing up, which is far likelier than 8e. Of major note are the heavy variants, as the Grav Cannon now hits 4 times versus the Plasma Cannon's 3, and is marginally cheaper to boot.

Overall, the range difference is still noticeable (but not excessive) and you do get slightly better to-wound rolls with overcharged Plasma. But for players who want safe and reliable MEQ-wreckers and have more important units their re-roll auras could be babysitting, Grav weapons are a very attractive choice in 9e.