Eldar has a problem in this game, espacialy since powernerf!
All 3 races, have to push stupidly infantrie until min 20 -> there is no other smart way to play around it!
ofcourse, some people would say now, HEY thats not true, i build 1 landspeeder on min 12 stfu.
To prevent this, if you build 1 vehicle without any upgrades, and skip infantrie upgrades for this. while your opponent has infantrie upgrades + anti tank weapon its not a smart way!
Also you can play around a "early" landspeeder, atleast as ORK or SM!
The problem of eldar is , they got no real weaponteam.
Ork build Loota -> scrap them up to get slow + crazy dmg in a line against infantrie -> light armor!
Ork build Tankbusters -> scrap them up -> to counter vehicles / buildings -> heavy armor!
Sm player build devastors against infantrie, its also AoE dmg, pretty decent.
Smplayer build laser devs against vehicles -> perma charge, and range is pretty sick. also the ability to give 1 laser dev in drop pod justincase (min 12+) to counter any skimmers flying around with 0/0 upgrades xD
Eldar has only 1 weaponteam -> dark reaper.
This dark reaper deal cause of this reason , truedmg.
They are not really decent against any sort of unittype ingame.
Thats atm the problem in my opinion. espacialy against orks!
While you have to deal as eldar player, against weaponteams really early on against infantrie.
And you are not able to tech in another way, you have to build also infantrie as eldar. and yeah without a real weaponteam against heavy armor or light armor its pretty shitty!
I wrote it allready in another topic.
To fix this problem, we need a rework of our dark reaper!
My idea to fix this problem!
Dark reaper deal now dmg to light unit's -> that means his dps will increase to be equal to loota/devs .
With tier2, a new upgrade is aviable in our soulstone -> called "Change stance of dark reaper"
Effect of "change stance of dark reaper"
Cooldown 1 min
Switch DMG type from light, to heavy
Dps equal to a Tankbusta / laserdev!
If you change the stance, your dark reaper will stay in this stance until you press this skill again.
with the 1 min cooldown on this spell, you have to think about how much dark reaper you want to switch now!
Hope you understand me.
Im pretty sure the plan was in the beginning of dow3 so.
That eldar play agressive in earlygame cause teleport option and get a adventage
If his opponent build a fast vehicle with weaponteams behind it, you could defend a little bit atleast near a LP or so with Dark reapers.
And then you could build your weaponteam against vehicles on tier 2, WRAITHGUARD!
its just not possible with our ressource system and map design!
Its also annoying if your opponent manage to get termis first or another heavy armor elite out.
Basicly you lost allready if you see a termi on min 11-12 on the field .
As eldar player you are not able to build anythink on min 11-12 to counter a terminator!!
Not even a Elite could kill him.
I played against Vindicarex on a custommap. 1 save elite gen, and another one also.
Termis out on min 13 as i remember, while i was not able to build a single unit to counter this xD
Even if i would build up 4 -5 power reactors (up on min 4) it would be not possible to get 2 wraithguards out .
why 2? 1 can be easy countered by asm's workers, scouts in melee stance and so on!
so i would need to counter a termi on min 13 , nearly 600 power to build this 2 units -> not possible.
And this 600 would be without soulstone, and infantrie +1 upgrade , while my opponent could get this easy (just 150 power)
Comments
esleg
Dark Reaper are building deconstructors and general support. This is kind of long but I think you are referencing that bolters and other specialized units are better (which they can be). The problem with that assertion is you need twice as much req to get a pair of anti vehicle and anti unit, whereas a Dark Reaper can early attack anything and generally hold down areas for the price of 1. I agree however they are probably the seemingly 'worst' unit alone and lose easily to bolters but it all depends how you use them.
I do like to point out, some of the top players are not 'the best' all the time, or optimal all the time. They play, they smurf, they sometimes lose, they don't talk about it but it happens. For example they don't know the true power of Eldar in team games which is truly OP, wraithknight turtling into wraithblade/wraithguard spam and recycling of these units with infinite recall. Also highly useful and brainless early play to be defensive (or even offensive if you catch your opponent offguard) can involve banshee/quick strike research to eat up superior blobs or properly executed ranger spams.
Then if the game last long enough and you haven't completely dominated the battlefield you can transition into getting a Fireprism. It's the definition of waiting/turtling and then coming out strong. I have great replays/games in quickmatch which lasted 40-60 mins where I singlehandedly got the 200-300 more kills over SM who transitioned into tanks and had their full strength by utilizing the power of wraiths/recall on the field. Fireprism is great too but the overall utility is bad unless it's in support of an already good army. i.e. everyone 'thinks' you will just make a stupid falcon or fireprism which they can target down in 1 hit, but you go for more balanced build to be safe..
In 1v1 obviously you do get an advantage and will win if you just spam 'low elite pt' elites. There's nothing to save you and thus having 3 elites while your enemy has 1 or 2 is a big advantage that can let you instantly win, but then failing means your opponent will eventually win (but failing is very low probability). There's also different play where the best players usually just send 1 unit to attack resource nodes very 'easy' but annoying gameplay. Between 1v1s, 2v2s or even 3v3s, each one makes the game have a completely different optimal strategy because of power balance changing completely.
Wraithguards have always been pretty bad. I only end up mixing them in for special counter situations (vehicle spam noobs) or other things like that. If you go full wraithguard and use their doctrines, their utility can shoot through the roof, but they still aren't an amazing unit.
The thing is too WraithGuard is like.. 3 squad members.. so what you said about the melee is true. (and I said this once before with the picture I posted of the worker attacking a wraithguard xD). However the devs did double the melee damage from 8 to 16. Before it was even worse, 5 sm in melee were outputing more damage than the 3 wraithguard because their melee damage was the same. They are huge and powerful units.. they should be fearful and no one should want to melee with them, but instead they are pretty fragile and can't do their job of fending off the dreadnought (or tank if he turtles) that will come.
You're right there are imbalances but Eldar can be easily top with the right playstyle.. I think it's a bit 'strange' everyone says they are underpowered but in lategame I only play Eldar and I only do 1 specific set of strategies (as I said above) and it's pretty op compared to fragile crap people think is the 'meta'.
Again, streamers might say 'hey i am a pro guys watch me' but they might take 3 years to be as good as someone who's really a top player who just jumps in and plays for a week.. they might be doing something unoptimal for a while and not even know it.
Anyway, tell meh how you think. SM is clunky, slow, and tanky, pretty straightforward to play. Ork is pretty spammy/powerful. But I've still seen both lose VERY BADLY to Eldar and usually can pull off superior stats with Eldar when everyone else is just a row of SM or Orks.
AlienHack
in 2v2 or 3v3 you can get support and map control from your teammates so eldar can progress to tier 2-3 and there yes they have the power to stand against SM . they have good late game units and elites .
BUT in 1v1 currently THERE is NO way to keep up against a good SM player. even against a medium one. you have no way to kill any of his units . tell me with what units you can go against 3 tacts 1 assault and a droppod and banner
tell me what units you need to stop them.
the minimum you should have is 4 dire avengers for front line . 2 reapers at the back (one will probably be killed by assault jump) and 2 banshees. so minimum 8 units to counter 4 SM units and banner
so that you can have a chance. their drop pods, their banner all these just make your reapers obsolete. so you have no unit that can deal enough damage to them . dire avengers are a joke with their low damage output and their weapon cooldown. banshees are ok early game . if SM has a devastator , their are cannon foder.
vindicarex
I think a lot of issues of Eldar strength revolves around their ability to keep enemy infantry off the field.
Relic has designed them more of a hit-and-run race. Do damage here, and back up when shield run low - or something along those lines. Problem is; much of the game does not revolve around skirmishing where Eldar shine. Much of the fights revolve around big pushes defending/attacking shield generator atm. This meta forces eldar to commit hard to a fight - something bad for Eldar as a race in general. If Eldar are reacting to a big push (as if often the case), they are already on the back-foot.
If you could Harass boyz/marines in the early game so that they had to run much further back to base than they currently have to do, Eldar would feel much more powerful because the downtime of taking harassment from Eldar would be, say, 30 seconds instead of 10 - big difference.
Maybe Dark Reapers/banshees could still use buffs - but I think a lot of Eldar weakness rn comes from the meta game favoring big-push styles (so mass tacticals and shootas/boyz are very strong as mobile, offensive units).
Further still, if players were not FORCED to defend shield gen, Eldar could bide-time and continue this harassment and whittling-down of marines as a stall-tactic for powerful tech. (as it stand: you MUST defend it - giving up the 1 EP + 50 power is too much to just sacrifice - better to try a defense and maybe win the fight instead of not defending and losing the game).
If shield gen gave, say, just 500/25 req/power - early game push would have a far lower pay-off than it does now (and thus, indirectly buffing the viability of going for tech). At least this way - Eldar wouldn't NEED to win early game just to live...
esleg
As I said, don't know if you read because I wrote a lot, the 'meta' is not making a fragile grav tank all the time. If you want a well-rounded ground holding force for macro play then transition first purely into wraith doctrines/wraith blades/wraith guards/wraith upgrades. Wraithguards still aren't that amazing, they don't trade with dreadnoughts and other things, but Wraithblades are an extreme high utility late-game unit especially if you can recycle them, and if enemy is tied down and can't reach Wraithguards they become an extreme tank/fortification destroyer. For early play I usually just trade even and asap banshee spam/quick strike with Reflecting Strike doctrine and they trade evenly or make big plays a lot of times (not here but it trades evenly at least). You can cut up/move to bolters thru everything, also banshee playstyle helps to have an extra banshee doctrine to help them trade even. Just like a ranger-specific or dire-avenger specific player might use special doctrines because that is what they want to use.
Flick through a match I played yesterday where I was basically slow-1v2ing against a decent team with tanks:
https://www.gamereplays.org/dawnofwar3/replays.php?game=95&show=details&id=325140&st=0#10084257
Or some others (all but 1 as Eldar so far): https://www.gamereplays.org/dawnofwar3/replays.php?game=95&show=member_replays&member_id=248081
I also have won 1v1s vs some people who played/rank higher as Eldar but haven't uploaded, some are old and incompatible, etc. but a lot of people fear what early game Eldar can do and thus turtling and defending to get a reward usually catches most players offguard. (Not to mention, lots of cool things you can do with very specific combos/doctrines here).
HohesHaus
The problem is that Dires can't scale with Rangers. Dire cost 330 and for just 15 energy more, you can get a stealthed unit, with a high sight radius and way more damage. 5 Rangers kill a squad far quicker and better than 5 Dires. Dire need a shield buff otherwise it will always end in ranger spamm because nothing else is working.
I tried
4x Dire - fail
2x Dire 1x Banshee - fail
3x Reaper - fail
The disturbance ability of SM is just waaaaay too high. Another solution could be that the banner doesn't do any knockback