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Utilising the Webway
Lude
Hi all, as well as making occasional complaints about balance problems I decided I should try and share some advice on playing the game.
This thread is a low-down on the ways in which I use the abilities of Eldar buildings. Feel free to share your ideas if you wish.
Magic Tricks and Technicalities
The Eldar have the following special abilities for their structures:
Fleet of Foot: Units within the radius of a Webway Gate gain increased movement speed (+2 for infantry units, +3 for vehicles and Elites) and increased shield regeneration as follows:
No FoF: +2/s
FoF: +4/s
FoF with Shield Regeneration upgrade: +6/s
Webway Gate hotkey (Bonesinger) C, W
Note about Enhanced Battle Focus (Macha's Command): it is broken, and if you activate it even once it will break the Shield Regeneration upgrade from the soul shrine such that it will no longer take effect, even if you have already researched it. If you take Enhanced Battle Focus, forget about the Shield Regeneration upgrade; personally, I simply forget about Enhanced Battle Focus.
Relocate:120 second cooldown, relocate to anywhere that the building will fit within your vision range. To relocate to stealth cover, you must have a unit in the stealth cover to provide vision. All buildings, while relocating, continue their normal functions, be that producing units, upgrades or providing FoF. Hotkey Z
Connect Webways: Unlocked at Tier 2 for production buildings (not soul shrine or listening posts), or at Tier 3 for Webway Gates. Connect 2 buildings to teleport between them. Takes some time to activate; you appear around the edge of the building at the other end of your connection. 30 second cooldown, this appears to be a global cooldown for all of your buildings; however because it's relatively short, I rarely find it prevents me using the ability. When a building that is connected via webway relocates, the connection is re-established after the relocation is complete. It takes about 5 seconds to connect webways. Being aggressed does not prevent you from using a Webway Connection, but you are very vulnerable to AoE nukes while using one, so don't make a webway connection to move your units anywhere where your opponents are likely to be. Hotkey D
Webway Holo-field: This is a doctrine that gives your webway the ability to give stealth to itself and in a circle around itself for 30 seconds, with a 120 second cooldown (Wraithlord's Command does NOT reduce this cooldown, unfortunately). Affects all buildings within its radius; buildings don't get any combat timers and so are automatically stealthed no matter what. Units that are in combat or have been in combat won't gain stealth until they have been out of combat for 10 seconds, but units that teleport via webway or are produced while within the radius of the holo-field gain stealth. Units that enter stealth cover that is within the radius of the holo-field and are not attacking gain stealth from the holofield, so units that enter the stealth cover will still be unable to see them. Holo-field stealth can only be broken by Detection. Hotkey W
Improved Listening Post: This is a doctrine that gives your listening posts, AFAIK, +50% HP and +50% DPS. Only Eldar and Space Marines have this ability available to them. Hotkey (Bonesinger) C, R
Shuriken Grav-Platform: This doctrine gives you a turret that does approximately the same damage as a listening post (not improved). It costs some req and 60 power, which is too much for it to ever be worth having, especially compared to Improved Listening Posts.
Wraithlord's Command: Improved Webways: Increases the health of your webways and makes them regenerate health outside of battle; halves their relocate cooldown to 60 seconds. I don't recommend this doctrine; the holo-field is a much better way to protect your webways and structures, and the reduced cooldown is irrelevant by the time webway relocation becomes available to you, as you should have built enough webways that you have enough to warp around to where you need them.
Deployable Energy Shields: Another doctrine that gives you a buildable structure that costs 50 power, which is too much to be worth it. They would be better than turrets if they were available at T1, but they're not, so don't take this doctrine.
Comments
Lude
The Setup
A structure based doctrine setup would include Webway Holo-field and Improved Listening Post, two very potent abilities because they take effect at the start of the game and give Eldar a secret trump card when they need it most. I also take Improved Scream and Macha for the same reasons.
Get T2, maintain FoF
FoF is completely and utterly required for Eldar to remain competitive with the other races. The speed bonus is the difference between being able to escape from their units and dying in a fire (unless if they hit you with a flamer, then you are truly dead); the shield regeneration is also important, and effectively increases your units tank in combat and allows them to re-engage more quickly, which means you can take advantage of the shield mechanic to bleed your opponent's models. You need a Webway Gate put up before any of your units even hit the field, so send the bonesinger you start the game with to produce it, and then make more to build your Warrior Portal. One should also remember that T2 allows you to relocate your Webway Gates, and as such is an important milestone that allows you to begin playing much more aggressively, by relocating a Webway Gate to cover an opponent's shield generator.
My use of early game power usually works as follows: produce first webwy gate; buy elite point (first, or not at all; its cost increases with each resource node you own) buy one or two requisition generators; continue producing webway gates as needed; build soul shrine, get infantry shields and damage upgrades (which both increase your infantry's potency when combined with Macha's W); then save for T2. You should aim to buy all the power nodes you can as early as you can, and play defensively using your listening posts, holo-fields, banshees and reapers until, Macha, infantry upgrades, and finally T2. Also keep in mind that Infantry Shields upgrade actually regenerates 100% of all of your infantry's shields once it is completed, potentially giving you a nice power spike.
Webway Holo-field
The Webway Holo-field is full of important technicalities because they dictate the ways in which we can take advantage of our structure's special abilities.
I use the Webway Holo-field in all game modes. It's taken me a while to work out the most effective ways to use it, but now that I have, it helps to make Relocation and Connect Webways much more potent abilities.
The first role of the Holo-field is to protect my structures; a 'get out of jail free' card for an aggressively positioned early Warrior Portal.
At the beginning of the game, send your first bonesinger to construct a webway gate near to the position I am attack or defending in stealth cover. Then produce a Warrior Portal in your base, while also producing Dire Avengers at your Webway Assembly. Relocate your new Warrior Portal to the Webway Gate's side, while beginning production of your second infantry unit (for me, usually Banshees). I don't advise putting it in stealth cover, because it unlikely to fit and because produced units won't auto-aggress. Your Warrior Portal is now pretty safe from attack; you can activate the Holo-field for immunity to attack for 30 seconds while you defensively relocate it, or prepare a counter-attack to recapture the position. Often I end up using this when 2 point elites hit the field and I am holding out for Macha to save my ++heresy redacted++.
If you've positioned your Warrior Portal near a resource point, you can build an Improved Listening Post which can put enough pressure on attacking enemies to force them to retreat. I often find that armies that are attacking my webway gates or nearby structures will leave almost immediately after I use the holo-field, sometimes forgetting to come back to finish the job. Since having forward bases is a huge advantage in this game, giving healing to elites and reinforcement to units, being able to position your buildings with impunity is a pretty huge advantage, especially in 1v1.
Using the holo-field aggressively is severely limited by combat timers, but units that are produced by your buildings while within the radius of the holo-field will gain stealth, often encouraging an opponent to over-commit without awareness of your secret numerical advantage. The Holo-field can also enable some quick counter-attacks if you activate it in the path of your retreating units; once your opponent breaks off his chase, regain stealth and move forward your units for a quick counter attack. As mentioned earlier, units that teleport via webway to a building that is within the radius of the webway holo-field will gain stealth, provided that they were not in combat on the other side; occasionally this can give you a surprise advantage as well. Sometimes, if I activate the holo-field at the right time, my opponent will blob up while moving past my units, allowing me to get a nice surprise stasis off with Macha and clean his army up.
Lude
Aggressive relocation
While defensive relocation is pretty self explanatory, aggressive relocation is something that requires much more use of judgement because it can easily go awry. Nevertheless it's an extremely good way to drive a wedge in your opponent's defenses in 1v1 and in team games allows you to support your whole team's assault with a reinforcement point. If you've reached T2, you should also relocate a webway to provide holo-field protection and Fleet of Foot. On top of this, your structures provide an extra target for your opponents units to shoot, either soaking up damage or simply reinforcing your units unabated.
For Eldar, fighting while reinforcing is bad, because our units are extremely weak once our shields are down. However, there are ways to do this if it should occur. Use healthy Banshee squads or Avenger grenades to tie up attacking units, so that your weaker units can reinforce; try and rotate your units such that you always have a healthy squad. Banshees are your best unit for screening weakened or ranged units, especially with Improved Scream. Macha's stasis can also provide an opportunity to reinforce your units such that even if they don't have shields up, they are at least applying full DPS to your enemies. Her Psyker Blast can also protect units that have lost their shields while in combat, and her decent tank and melee DPS also allow her to play a similar role to a squad of Howling Banshees.
'Sneaky sneaky' Webway connections
Once you unlock T2 you should try and get a second Warrior Portal as soon as possible; they cost only 250 requisition and allow you to quickly teleport all of your units to respond to a backdoor attempt, etc, and also allow you to continue producing units if you decide to upgrade for Shadow Spectres or Rangers. Keep in mind that when you build a second Warrior Portal, its relocation cooldown is at 0; this means that, if you can get away with it, you can teleport a worker near to your opponents resources but out of vision range; build a new Warrior Portal; Connect Webways at T2 to send some Banshees to take out a listening post and resource nodes; teleport your units back and then relocate the Warrior Portal straight away for an unpunishable resource point snipe. If you manage to erect a Webway Gate you can also benefit from Holo-field protection and then move the Webway Gate to another position as you like. Albeit this is easier said than done - but if you make use of the Bonesinger's teleport to move between stealth cover and your intended location it's possible to do all this undetected on some maps. This is a good way to gain some benefit from your second Warrior Portal straight away while keeping an extra around such that you can use it to aggressively relocate while assaulting later on or use it to react defensively. Make sure, during 1v1, to build your T2 buildings near to the shield generator you are least able to defend, so you can react quickly to base race attacks.
I hope this guide has given some ideas to new players and others!
Confusius
I strongly like the teleport plays. While they are rough to pull off while in game it should be utilized by more Eldar players myself included.
Good piece of read. +1
Lude
Holo-Field helps with this a lot. Atm I'm combining this with Ranger Focus so I can fight with webway gates in stealth cover and extra vision range.
Thunderhost
Very nicely explained, kudos to you. Be advised that buildings in transit and/or connected by webway take increased damage. Not sure how clearly you stated that.
Lude
I actually had no idea about this, never seen the info in game. Where did you find out about this ?
Thunderhost
@Lude From trying it out and I also think the codex says it.