Fire Dragons

[Torpid]

Ok, so dark reapers exist because eldar t2 can't beat the t3 of other races (makes sense I know), however I'm absolutely baffled as to why fire dragons need to exist.

Somebody care to enlighten me? I mean it's not like Eldar have trouble dealing with transports as it is, they have ample AV and elite has only made dealing with transports even easier with the 100% FOTM WL BL and shuriken changes. Why do fire dragons exist?

[FiSH]

I always thought it was because of SORC matchup to deal with the t/kdread as the weapons platform gets gibbed and WLBL dps doesn't quite cut it.

[crazyman64335]

fire dragons were introduced far before 100% FOTM wraithlord brightlance. that's why

[Torpid]

Well I never realised that in retail a razorback was an instant GG against eldar like it is against orks. I can't say I'm going to accept such an argument without further elaboration.

[Dark Riku]

What makes you think RB = instant GG vs Eldar in retail?
And Bustas are your friends. Heck even infiltrated lootas are :p

Are you speaking from retail or Elite perspective on the Ork part? It's unclear for me.

[ThongSong]

pretty much Eldar's entire t2 is soft/hard av. almost like Chaos back in retail

[Nuclear Arbitor]

i don't remember a specific reason being given for fire dragons being added. they were added at the same time as dark reapers and i always assumed it was because there was room, there were models available, and it provides variety.

[Lulgrim]

Well one motivation was certainly the "oh look another plat" unit roster of Loldar.

[ThongSong]

you dog I hurd you like platforms so I put a platform in your shuriken platform so you can platform while you platform.

[Torpid]

Frankly they're too strong with the farseer. Guide on fire dragons + doom on a vehicle is insane, not to mention if the dragons are sprinting along via farseer gate infiltration with a farseer nearby and you don't have a detector nearby then your transport will die in a matter of seconds. However they don't really do much if you're not the farseer, so they're a really awkward unit, they frustrate me.

[HandSome SoddiNg]

Frankly they're too strong with the farseer. Guide on fire dragons + doom on a vehicle is insane, not to mention if the dragons are sprinting along via farseer gate infiltration with a farseer nearby and you don't have a detector nearby then your transport will die in a matter of seconds. However they don't really do much if you're not the farseer, so they're a really awkward unit, they frustrate me.

True, Eldar has the Most Diversity in Elite now. They already can handle HI/Horde races effectively. FD ,you just need to disrupt them from firing their guns ,not tie them while they sprint towards Vehicular onslaught . Funny how Eldar has to get BL or Generalist WS/Shees build to rid of Vehicles in retail . Those were the days,lulz

[Asmon]

Firedragons were added because Eldar struggled against heavy walkers.

[saltychipmunk]

from what Ive come to see them as , they are that secondary finisher av unit.
The second component in that near unbeatable av combo that usually out right kills most vehicles out side of super units.

brightlances and banshee melee heavy just are not quite enough to finish vehicles.
lances lack the much needed root (which now that they are just an upgrade for the same cost as las cannons we may need to look at that unit) and banshees just don't have the av dps and are fragile.


dragons are a good unit. They do an admirable job vs tank rushes and they are excellent for early t2 gen bashes and acting as a deterrent for possible tanks.

they are after all extremely cheap even when you buy the leader.

[Dark Riku]

lances lack the much needed root (which now that they are just an upgrade for the same cost as las cannons we may need to look at that unit) and banshees just don't have the av dps and are fragile.

You can't be serious.

[Nurland]

BL has the highest dps of all AV set ups, Beam Scorch ability and great mobility to compensate the lack of snare.

[saltychipmunk]

dont worry riku , about the lances , no i am not serious. they are a 9 pop support platform + the beam scorch thingy , they don't need the root. But i know how much you love chewing up my silly posts.

but at the same time the lack of root does make it very easy to escape the lances.
so the fire dragons tend to be necessary for when the tanks get out of range

though really and kind of secondary av would work.

you just need two of something to make an av combo work

[Nuclear Arbitor]

people keep harping on brightlances having the highest damage of the setup teams. while this is true it's 3 dps higher than lootas and 4 dps higher than the HWT. pretty insignificant difference. the real difference is between it the marine variants.

[Ace of Swords]

Brightlance is a constant stream of high DPS, the other setup teams are high burst damage with a slow, basically if you land a warp spider nade on a vehicle under brightlance fire it's done for, that was the retail combo pretty much, shees, spiders,brightlance and you pretty much had the best AV combo in the game.

This hasn't changed, they have just more variety, both in anti infantry and AV so they can do different builds, and now that the brightlance has that 20% increased damage on single entities as ability it's pretty amazing.

[Torpid]

Brightlances are no worse than lascannons solo at dealing with vehicles, the only time a lascannon is better is when you have other AV such as missle tacs to follow up with it and therefore the snare indirectly increases the damage they can do.
Not to mention eldar get an awesome snare in the form of the haywire grenade, which is great as it prevents ability useage that usually counters the brightlance (charge on vehicles/rampage on DD/assault cannon barrage), but that's probably balanced by the fact that melta+lascannon combo = 100% immobilisation. Ultimately they're equal.

Personally I don't see how fire dragons are meant to help take down walkers, I get that they're supplementary, but they can't do the job alone at all, the only thing they have the dps to do that against is the deff dread yet that will kill them VERY fast with it's burnas. Therefore the FDs always have to chill around the brightlance, in which their mobility is negated and you may as well have double lances. That said, fire dragons+haywires+melee shees is a very strong AV combination, but that is too strong IMO with the farseer. Guide/doom combo alongside the farseer gates basically guarantees a transport kill if a detector isn't camping the transport.

Not liking dragons :L

[Arbit]

re: lascannon vs brightlance

Brightlances are no worse than lascannons solo at dealing with vehicles, the only time a lascannon is better is when you have other AV such as missle tacs to follow up with it and therefore the snare indirectly increases the damage they can do.

I don't think this is quite true. A lascannon will fare much better against a melta dread set to melee. Probably an asscannon dread as well assuming barrage is on cooldown. The reason being, melta/asscannon dreads gets full dps on approach due to 100% fotm. The dread just needs a punch or two, then chase it a bit (more 100% fotm damage) while it retreats for a squad wipe. The brightlance will need to retreat before it has done much damage to the dread in order to avoid a squad wipe. A lascannon can snare it, do substantial damage, and retreat before it gets too close. Maybe it's a corner case, but there you have it.

Ranged dreads set to melee will also shoot/beat the crap out of firedragons FWIW.

[Bahamut]

Personally I don't see how fire dragons are meant to help take down walkers, I get that they're supplementary, but they can't do the job alone at all, the only thing they have the dps to do that against is the deff dread yet that will kill them VERY fast with it's burnas. Therefore the FDs always have to chill around the brightlance, in which their mobility is negated and you may as well have double lances. That said, fire dragons+haywires+melee shees is a very strong AV combination, but that is too strong IMO with the farseer. Guide/doom combo alongside the farseer gates basically guarantees a transport kill if a detector isn't camping the transport.

Not liking dragons :L

Fire dragons + haywire grande from warpspider would have the same effect as orb of omnisiah or melta bomb + RL tac or zoan + venon brood or storm troppers with melta kit or krak granade + purgator with psi cannons. Pretty much if you get fire dragons you dont need brightlance plataform

Of course, fire dragon + haywire seems to be second only to storm troppers with melta kit

[Kithrixx]

Fire Dragons are the Eldar equivalent of Missile Launcher Tacs, not unlike how the Dark Reapers are the Eldar equivalent of Plasma Gun Tacs. At least, that's as far as I can figure it.

[Torpid]

So when do my shoota boys get their rokkit launcher upgrades/blasta upgrades on their nobs?

[Dark Riku]

Fire Dragons are the Eldar equivalent of Missile Launcher Tacs, not unlike how the Dark Reapers are the Eldar equivalent of Plasma Gun Tacs. At least, that's as far as I can figure it.

Except that they do a ton of more damage and that the meltaguns dmg everything while the missiles misses every infantry model that isn't a terminator. -.-
And the prices ~~

[Torpid]

Not to mention the fact that the versatility that tacs have is meant to be a great trait of space marines - they always have the ability to adapt to very situation perfectly (more or less), whereas other races typically have to stall for a while until they can truly counter-attack, or they lose.

[Forestradio]

So when do my shoota boys get their rokkit launcher upgrades/blasta upgrades on their nobs?

because shoota boyz do a lot more piercing dps than tacs do?????

You do get a shoota boy squad in T3 that gets a rokkit launcha nob, it's called the kommando squad, which is criminally underused IMO, but whatever.

Fire dragons bleed very easily and their short range means that they are good at chasing stuff with their FoF ability that doesn't decrease their damage.

Yeah they can pull some nasty stuff with farseer buffs, but so can every other eldar ranged unit. Warp spiders/dark reapers with guide are insanely powerful at doing their job (killing infantry/heavy infantry). And they don't have to expose themselves the way dragons do anyway.

I'm just grateful that fire dragons aren't the DOW1 variety. Knockback immunity, high morale, terminator type armor and high health. Yikes (although they were crap vs infantry).

tl;dr Fire dragons are fine.

[Torpid]

So when do my shoota boys get their rokkit launcher upgrades/blasta upgrades on their nobs?

because shoota boyz do a lot more piercing dps than tacs do?????

So do guardians, so why do they need a more versatile t2? Also, tank bustas < fire dragons.

Yeah they can pull some nasty stuff with farseer buffs, but so can every other eldar ranged unit. Warp spiders/dark reapers with guide are insanely powerful at doing their job (killing infantry/heavy infantry). And they don't have to expose themselves the way dragons do anyway.

The thing is though that with vehicles it's just a all in or all out thing. The first time fire dragons come out you can plan so that you don't reveal them until their vehicle is in a position whereby you can instantly take it out. Fire dragons will kill a transport in 2-4 seconds with guide/doom, and there's really very little you can do about it often because they aren't going to charge in from gate-filtration alone. Then that's it, the vehicle is gone. With guided spiders/reapers you can accept the bad scenario you put yourself in, concede some map+bleed and just retreat, it isn't an instant game changer. Fire dragons are, and then to make matters worse, unlike things like trukk-bustas which do a similar job, albeit not quite as well, the FDs are very proficient capping units with their uber-FoF and strong combat potential vs other melee cappers/weak t1 units such as unupgraded GM/terms/scouts etc.

[Dark Riku]

You are highly underestimating how good bustas are.
Especially their barrage vs infantry and vehicles.

[Kithrixx]

Fire Dragons are the Eldar equivalent of Missile Launcher Tacs, not unlike how the Dark Reapers are the Eldar equivalent of Plasma Gun Tacs. At least, that's as far as I can figure it.

Except that they do a ton of more damage and that the meltaguns dmg everything while the missiles misses every infantry model that isn't a terminator. -.-
And the prices ~~

Shrug. Missile Tacs vastly outrange Fire Dragons, in addition to being better for melee (taking punches AND dealing them) and being more durable on the whole. Fire Dragons are made of gofast and anger which can definitely be nice, but they rarely (if ever) have cover bonuses which limits their effectiveness even further given their low durability and inability to roll with punches.

Granted, these drawbacks can neatly be overcome through combined arms or proper micro (dat movespeed), but that's true for most units anyways.

The thing is though that with vehicles it's just a all in or all out thing. The first time fire dragons come out you can plan so that you don't reveal them until their vehicle is in a position whereby you can instantly take it out. Fire dragons will kill a transport in 2-4 seconds with guide/doom, and there's really very little you can do about it often because they aren't going to charge in from gate-filtration alone. Then that's it, the vehicle is gone. With guided spiders/reapers you can accept the bad scenario you put yourself in, concede some map+bleed and just retreat, it isn't an instant game changer. Fire dragons are, and then to make matters worse, unlike things like trukk-bustas which do a similar job, albeit not quite as well, the FDs are very proficient capping units with their uber-FoF and strong combat potential vs other melee cappers/weak t1 units such as unupgraded GM/terms/scouts etc.

A solution to what I'm perceiving is your problem is that you just keep a disruption unit on hand with your vehicle force. Shotgun Scouts, Sluggas, Catachans, jump troops, and plenty of Commanders will do a fine job of sending the Fire Dragons sprawling to the ground or tying them up in melee where they will fold in short order.

Alternately, just be more conservative with your vehicle advancements and bait the Fire Dragons to come to you, in which case you can attack them at long range and they can't do much about it because meltas don't exactly have the best reach.

[Commissar Vocaloid]

I've noticed that fire dragons do fantastic in taking advantage of enemies who are out of place (i.e dreads too far ahead for proper support). They force a reaction of the player to retreat their dread to safer grounds and allows you to safely maneuver them with their FoF to get in a few more pot shots.

I don't think there are many AV units that simply work well on their own against vehicles/walkers (well, maybe with rear hits on vehicles but that can be said with many units). Especially when we're talking non-AV), problem being that most units that are AV are pretty much LI and will take that equal punishment in return as you stated.

So perhaps the play style of fire dragons is being played wrong? Maybe they should be played more defensively and as reactionary units? I mean, with the troop transport kills with doom/guide as it has been mentioned before, I can almost assume that a lot of the cases the transport is somewhat out of position enough for risking a few dragon losses well worth the take down of a misplace troop transport. The FoF also almost screams "killing on retreat", must as we are used to Banshees already. I'm only making these assumptions as I've seen some really good plays with fire dragons.