Why are there no 2 Banshee builds?

[Lichtbringer]

We have 2+ slugga builds, 2+ horma builds, and 2+ tic builds.
Why has there never been a 2 Banshee build?

What makes it work for other Races, but not for Eldar?

[Aguxyz]

WSE group tele makes 2 shees work

[Adeptus Noobus]

Until your enemy figures out that he can simply aoe cluster fuck the teleport site and make mass teleporting a really non-fun experience for you.
Double Banshees just doesn't give you enough to make it worth while (i.e. not enough bang for your buck) and it gets easily countered (unless you are the WSE).

[Cyris]

We have 2+ slugga builds, 2+ horma builds, and 2+ tic builds.
Why has there never been a 2 Banshee build?

What makes it work for other Races, but not for Eldar?

In no particular order (1v1 perspective):
Eldar mostly rely on single target buffs to enhance shees, making 2 difficult to keep buffed up.
Shees do not scale into T2 as well, compared to the other 2x builds mentioned. Slugga Nobs are amazing and melee synapse is lulzy. 2x tic is less of a "melee" build and more of a foundation for doing whatever.
2x Shees plus upgrades is a LOT more expensive then any of the other 2x melee builds (850/40), and often a 4th T1.5 squad will be needed to support. This leads to a very weak capping force.
Each of the other 2x melee builds you mentioned include your starting squad which helps with costing, and 2 of them repair which helps them scale.
The bleed is so real. 35 req a model is back-breaking enough for 1 shee squad.
The risk is there, but the rewards aren't. If you rout an enemy army with 2x hormas or sluggas, the chase-kill can be very rewarding. Not so much with shees.

I tried 2x shees a few times months ago. It just bled so bad and I couldn't spare squads to cap much. Maybe I'll try em again in 2.5 some time. I'm not sure what races it'd be ideal against, or what commander to support them with. WL - cloak of shadows FS - Spirit stones WSE - tie up setup teams. I feel like it has a chance of working if you can be very proactive about flanking. My instinct is that shees lack of chase and high cost with upgrades (425/20) makes fielding 2 hard. Rangers would go super well with them if they were a bit cheaper too (Pulse/suppression into rushdown).

[Lichtbringer]

Oh yeah, good point about them being starting squads.

[Thunderhost]

So basically Banshees are worse than sluggas/hormas and with worse chasing potential?

[Dark Riku]

So basically Banshees are worse than sluggas/hormas and with worse chasing potential?

No.

[egewithin]

Well they are basicially expensive and too frigale to make it work as good as other 2 builds then?

[Adeptus Noobus]

Well they are basicially expensive and too frigale to make it work as good as other 2 builds then?

Exactly. Cyris pretty much laid it down. They need lots of power to make them good. Bleeding from one squad is bad enough.

The main problem I have with this idea is the following: Eldar are not designed that way. You may counter with "But what about 2 Dire Avengers or 2 Rangers or 2 Shuriken plattforms?" to which I would say "look at what those give you on the battlefield with no further investments neccessary". If you take a look at Banshees in a vacuum, they are good but not a dominating force. They only become very good through synergy between different unit types, which is basically how Eldar are supposed to be played imo. Creating opportunities in which you can maximize each units full potential by linking all the trickery and shenannigans that Eldar have. If you send Banshees into combat entirely on their own they will get defeated easily and sent home. Create a situation where they can get into combat without taking lots of focus-fire and furthermore have continued support while they are in melee and they will do what they do best.
Now why am I saying all this? It should be obvious that you need a lot of intra-unit-synergy to accomplish this for one Banshee squad. Supporting 2 Banshee squads not only becomes expensive but also skews your entire army composition to do only that, when they could be doing other stuff in the mean time.
Now, which hero can support 2 Banshees the best? Imo the WSE. The best counter to melee squads is suppression and knockback. Since he can teleport he basically counters suppression teams for free. His "Mass Teleport" also allows for Banshees to get into combat quickly if you set it up correctly. That is why you see 2 Banshees predominantly with the WSE. "Cloak of Shadows" and "Spirit Stones" are fine to support 2 Banshees but do not take care of the counters to Banshees and thus make the WL and FS inferior choices for a double Banshees build.

Last but not least: I'll let my man GZA explain to you how your Eldar army composition should be - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8Z6qWRugCY

[Cyris]

So basically Banshees are worse than sluggas/hormas and with worse chasing potential?

No.

To elaborate a bit, shees are not "worse" then sluggas/hormas in a general sense - they are different.

Each unit in DoW2 is a mix of attributes, efficiencies and investments. Shees bring a number of vital tools to the Eldar table, but their chase-killing is not terribly strong relative to other melee units (it is stronger then tics for instance). It can get nicely enhanced by buffs, but as mentioned a number of these buffs are single target, you don't start with a shee, and they are expensive to field and reinforce. This all together makes it tricky to make 2x shee builds work, though not necessarily impossible. It's an experiment I might try some time.

How about YOU try it, reader of this thread! Post replays of making it work, or ideas of what unit compositions to pair with it / enemy compositions it counters well.

Now why am I saying all this? It should be obvious that you need a lot of intra-unit-synergy to accomplish this for one Banshee squad. Supporting 2 Banshee squads not only becomes expensive but also skews your entire army composition to do only that, when they could be doing other stuff in the mean time.

I think this is very important to consider. 2x or 3x of any melee rushdown units are going to require support to open holes for them to get in, and the high shee pricetag combined with DA's not really having a good way to open up space / support shees, means you're going to have to invest a LOT to get them going. This in turn mean that you likely can't cap the map much, and a clever opponent will double down on anti-melee.

By contrast, hormas/sluggas are fairly cheap to buy, upgrade (340/30 for 2x AG hormas (+240 if you don't count the starter), 430/30 for 2x burna sluggas (+270 if you don't count the starter)) and reinforce. Both of these pairs are cheaper then shees and if you open up space for them WILL get more kills then shees can. Lower risk, higher reward. Their cost also leaves more resources open to buy support to make space for them or buff them. They also both internally scale better into T2 then shees (Nob and Endless Swarm being better then Exarch), which is more incentive to get 2.

[Lichtbringer]

Maybe it has to do with how good shurikens are, and banshees show their worth when defending a shurikenplatform. It allows them to get into combat without getting shot and often allows the Shurikenplatform to reposition.

And no this Thread is not really about are Banshees bad (though I have to admit the thought came to me ), thats why I posted in Strategy. I want to better understand the Eldar synergys, to abuse them better

My thought was: The general consensus is that they have to make it into melee, and then they are good. So if you had 2 squads, the enemy could only focus down one of them anyway.

Actually, I think maybe I could make it work against Chaos now. The problem were heretics, but they are no longer that good in melee. With the WSE to tie up Supression. The problem would still be T2, and that they have no retreatkill potential. The Orkblob works so well, because it wipes everything that it touches.

Hmm...

[Adeptus Noobus]

It should actually be worse vs Chaos since they have many counter-initiation tools. First of all 1 Havoc squad could potentially lock down both Banshee squads, if they are moving together (which obviously they should not). Depending on the Chaos hero, I would strongly advise you NOT to do try this build. The Plague Champion is well known to deal with melee squads with all his wargear and his globals (Touch of Nurgle, Plague Cloud, Chosen Plague Marines). PCs controlling wargear + globals + suppression = dead Banshees very fast. The Sorcerer just needs to purchase the Robes of Torment to effectively counter your Banshees. The Chaos Lord struggles the most against double Banshees when looking at his supportive skills + wargear since he is an egotistical prick who cares only about himself

[Tex]

chaos lord struggling against 2x banshee builds? HA!

How do you propose to play an early game against that kind of aggression? How do you get him into a dangerous level of health so your shees can close in with less fear of kill the weak?

I would say sorc is the only chaos hero you can effectively beat with 2x Shees, but you better win T1 in a convincing fashion because T2 will not be pretty.

[Cyris]

Sorc picks up sword of flames with 2 AC tics and melts them. Save the flame ability until an AC tic has just suppressed one of the shees, and that's gg.

Tex described CL vs shees pretty accurately. In that matchup, you MUST whittle him down with DA until he's low enough for the shees to dance in and out of range to bait the KTW, and THEN you can close in. Spending your req on a 2nd shee instead of 2nd DA or shuris/ranger to whittle the CL down is a recepie for failure. Maybe if you went DA, DA, shee, shee? That could be interesting, like the ork/nid 2 melee, 2 ranged style. My gut is the price/impact will still be off, but maybe I'll try it tonight.

Honestly, choas sounds like a really bad matchup to try this Maybe if you see double csm?

[Lichtbringer]

I would try and use the Rangers Holofield to make it work, plus the kinetic shot disruption, but I think that would be a one time trick untill your opponent buys a detector. (And Rangers scaling to T2 doesn't help I guess). Hm...

One time I had banshees on overwatch, so I got 2 of them. It worked pretty good with Warpspiders (callin) as AV. 2 Banshees with Exarch can easily kill anything Haywired. So maybe thats the Trick for the Scaling.

The WSE Shimmerorb might also work, though the knockbackresistence kinda works against Banshees. On the other hand it helps against ASM Seargant I guess.

[Adeptus Noobus]

The Orb no longer grants kb immunity.

[Lichtbringer]

The Orb no longer grants kb immunity.

Oh right *facepalm*

[ChokoBambus]

There are no two Banshee builds because:

- banshees are very expensive to upgrade with the leader, who dies way to fast all the time
- they fall of significantly in both utility and performance in tier 2
- eldar do not have a fast cheap transport to maneuver or sustain them
- they do not have the utility of a core unit like other melee core units: sluggas, heretics, etc

[Nurland]

Banshees are a bit heavy on the req economy (upkeep, bleed) and population for them to be generally viable.

Hormas and Sluggas are lighter for your economy and don't eat up so much population.

Also, the Shee exarch (like CSM ACs and SM Sarges can be a huge resource drain).
Once Hormas get ES, their bleed becomes minimal.
Slugga Nob has a huge health pool so he dies fairly rarely (and reduces slugga bleed significantly) compared to other squad leaders that aren't die-last-members.

[Thibix Magnus]

The only advantage of this build is that it’s not used often and can still destabilize, so don’t try it, don’t experiment and stop this discussion NOW !!
So … I never managed to make the build work in 1v1 against good playa, and it is my favorite build by far. Any information or rumor about a success with it is most welcome. It sounds obvious, but you really don’t use 2shees as you use one, you don’t counter-initiate with that, it’s an assault build, and the rest of the composition is entirely dedicated to your melee blob. This is unusual for eldar, you need a player with all its instincts tailored to melee, I wonder for example if Mathis did some eldar. I have a few ideas but won’t share them until I beat a good player with them, so maybe they will die with me

Most of the time it’s (only/ at least) a decent reaction build to other exotic builds. Against ASM/raptors + 2 marine squads you won’t be that wrong. Against good ol’ 2 ASM it’s kinda mandatory. Some chaos players choose to forsake melee tics for anti-shuri GL and 2 CSM to raw-dps down the banshees, which is very hard to deal with unless you buy that 2nd shee (PC still a nightmare though, or chains come T2).

This is fundamental, there is also the impact of the leap compared to the chase for this build, when the change was announced it was sure a big nerf but I was optimistic about the 2 shee build, through in-fight flexibility and performance, as 2 banshees are not your finishers but more your backbone now. But I ended up thinking that, on a more strategic/economic view, the big appeal of the build was still the wiping potential, to reward al the bleed, risks, and avoided fights… the leap makes them better skirmishers in T1 but scales worse than the chase later on. Let’s see now with the new post-leap performance. Leap makes them also better side-cappers for the SM MU exclusively (better vs shotgun scouts now).

Cloak of shadows has been banned all 2.4 so the WL 2shees with leap was un-testable until now, the WL 2shees also performed quite well before you had to send a recommended letter saying “dear enemy, please take into consideration I’m going to WARP THROW you, this is serious stuff dude, so kindly gtfo thx best” (yes I know any build worked better at that time, but this one even more).
Anyway I’m not in the best place to tell as I don’t play often enough and can’t tell the impact of in-game changes on performance while I also face better players. Hope to read more from anyone.

[MYNAME]

We have 2+ slugga builds, 2+ horma builds, and 2+ tic builds.
Why has there never been a 2 Banshee build?

What makes it work for other Races, but not for Eldar?

Because Banshees get rekt really easily once you figured out how to counter them (AOE (shotguns/ol reliable etc)/Dedicated Melee units). Great DPS and really fast but only can merc things that are not as good at fighting in hand to hand combat ie Guardsmen, Tac Marines, Shootas, Unmarked Chaos marines.