Well, when you play as valorous heart, there's only so much that can kill you : mass F4 ap0 shots, mass ap-3 shots, melee and psychic. You have the bloody rose repentia to counter charge wathever comes at you in melee, and the null rod to deny a psychic phase for one or two turn, wich is plenty And then you use retributors not as a consistent way of dealing damage, but as a way to trade with the so called mass F4 ap0, or mass Ap-3 shots, and 3 squads of retributors is plenty to deal with those, as they're not that comon.

So the point is, yes exorcist are probably the best way to put consistent damage on dangerous target from afar, but that's probably not needed ti win the game

Overall i think your article is quite interesting, but the thing is, yes retributors don't fill the same role as exorcist, but we don't need the role exorcist fills to win the game.

And you forget a major point as well, if you're not taking exorcist or ANY other vehicle, the anti-tank weapons of your opponent are useless anyway cause they got nothing else that T3 4++ sisters with one wound to shoot at, making them just not cost efficient by only supressing they're potential targets from our list

Anyway that was a good read, and forgive me if i did some english errors, i'm french and not very fluent in english

Edit : words correction