Deflaktor wrote:Forcing to buy rangers on top of battle equipment on a already power hungry race seems like a bad idea.
I agree with crog. Unupgraded dire avengers bleed too fast. It is better to have some tactical decision as a reason to buying battle equipment than "or else my economy is gonna be shit".
So I suggest, instead of battle equipment giving DA their HP back, it should give back their damage. That's right. Nerf base damage by 15% and give it back with battle equipment.
When there was discussion what to do with DA, people were against nerfing the base damage because then DA would be less of a glass cannon. It would remove part of their intended design. However imo it will benefit the game more if we went with that for two reasons.
First, the main complaint about DA was their insane DPS for how fast they came out. They can force off scouts or heretics extremely fast and as such SM and CSM have a very hard time against a banshee opening.
Second, if I were to decide to not buy Battle Equipment for DA then they are not part of my main force. Instead I have a different purpose for them in my mind. I would much rather have a cheap unit capping on the side lines without having to invest power in it. Or maybe I just want to have them as a damage sponge, to help shees get across. In this case I would much rather have defense than offense from the get-go.
That way I also have the tactical decision to either go for some damage (battle equipment) or more defense (exarch). This could open the opportunity to different play styles and alleviate the problem of Eldar being a power hungry race, since battle equipment is not that much of a must buy anymore.
Deflaktor wrote:Eldar are still pretty good and the changes were good indeed. However the playstyles are more limited now. You are forced to buy battle equipment for no good reason.
Removing detection from exarch limits the playstyles even more as then you are forced to buy rangers.
I just want more diversity
DA have always done the dps they do atm even since retail and for the longest of time were considered one of the weakest units in the game. They currently still perform better than retail because as Dullahan has noticed there has been an overall meta-wide power creep in terms of everything getting better, thus to stay viable DA need to be better than they were in retail. However, the battle equipment is weaker. Nobody complained about guardians in retail despite them being weaker than the modern DA. That is because it was implicitly known that if you went 3x guardians you were dumb. Eldar rely on their shurikens and their rangers depending on the MU.
But obviously those retail rangers were bloody ugly to fight, so we don't have them anymore, so you have to rely on mostly 2x DA +shurikens with one extra ranger thrown in for most T1s. Still one thing you can do on elite that you cannot reliably in retail is go for 2x shees. Since they cost so much less out of the gate in elite in spite of starting with more hp...
Playstyles may indeed be a bit more limited but that is because DA aren't OP. Under no circumstances whatsoever should 3x DA ever be a viable build for eldar. It breaks the design of the entire race and that is beyond disgusting.
Reducing damage makes them less hit-n-run which defeats the purpose of DA. All eldar units tend to be high damage, low durability, high cost to reinforce - warp spiders, dark reapers, fire dragons, DA, shees. There's a clear pattern there. I don't see how balance would be better with DA doing less damage and having more hp or vice versa. Mathematically it should all come out roughly the same, in fact, more damage over hp benefits 3x DA builds, but it is all about maintaining that thematic design they have. In a 1v1 you will NEVER see 3x DA blobbed up a-moving against an army in the early game because you need map control. So that damage side of it doesn't come into it and it is easier to bleed those rogue squads that are capping with your sneaky heroes or melee units.
Who said that eldar being power hungry is a problem? Are they even power hungry? I think that claim needs further qualification. Don't think they spend anymore power than SM, nids or orks, that's for sure. Also, I think the time to get the exarch is quite distinct from the time to get battle equipment, even now. Recall that the exarch gives a rather huge dps boost, not just a hp one. His problem of course is that he is not die-last.
Also, vs a good player one simply could not get away with just using the DA exarches for detection. That didn't save your shurikens from scout nades or stop the LA sneaking behind you. So I don't buy the idea that you "didn't need rangers before" and now you are forced to get them. Yes, you can't get detection elsewhere, but that pseudo-detection was weak as hell anyway, basically forced you to go rangers.
