Stats • Leveling • Weapons • Abilities • Upgrades • Strategy
This is written for patch 2.6.0 balance.
Overview[]
The Fire Prism is a fragile artillery tank that does splash damage from extreme range. It is the best anti-infantry tank because of the knockback and AoE damage, but not quite as deadly against vehicles as a Predator with the lascannon upgrade.
The Prism is especially good against mobs of soft infantry and melee units with no knockback immunity, such as Nobs. The knockback spam - especially from two Fire Prisms - will completely lock down such squads. Fire Prisms can and will kill vehicles, but they need numerous shots and will lose tank duels.
The weakness of the Prism is its low health and speed. It must hang behind the Eldar army and support from maximum range to avoid anti-tank fire. Jump units like ASM or Bloodletters will try to get behind it, which will pretty much guarantee a kill. Defending the Prism with a Banshee squad or Shuriken Cannon platform might be a good idea. If the enemy has a tank, it will hunt the Prism given a chance, so anti-tank support is necessary.
Dispersed Shot[]
The dispersed wide-area blast is best for anti-infantry duty; the damage is lower, but the blast area is larger which means the more models are around, the more damage will be dealt overall. The knockback protects your own units as the enemy cannot fire back. If you send in Banshees, however, switch the Prism's target so you don't shoot your own units to bits.
Focused Shot[]
The focused small-area blast is used against vehicles, buildings and super-heavy infantry (Terminators, GUO, Avatar). It deals much higher damage and still does knockback, but the AoE is so much smaller that mobs will suffer less.
Fire Prisms will outrange other tanks (65 vs. 44 range) but the damage of the focused shot is only approx. 22 DPS against vehicles, while a Predator does 32 DPS with the default autocannon and 55 DPS with the lascannon, so a Fire Prism isn't your primary AV choice.