The Eldar: a legacy of broken dreams and broken faction design

[AlphariusOmegan87]

Hey everyone! Let's play as the Eldar: the galaxy's most technologically advanced pile of donkey diarrhea! Yes, that's right folks, let's get outranged by depraved cultists and make costly errors that cost the lives of entire squads for the first 50 turns of a game, if you can even survive that long with this extremely nerfed and broken faction!

So, what is the big deal with these guys anyways?? Well for starters, the aforementioned neophyte hybrid thing; Everyone who has played the Eldar has marveled at the fact that their Guardians, who are 'more than a match for the soldiery of lesser races,' (actual unit description) can't even think about going toe-to-toe against these guys pretty much for the entire game, because they're outranged by these seemingly elite ass-stompers. And not just outranged either folks, because these supreme badasses can shroud to reduce ranged damage, AND STILL MOVE AND ATTACK, unlike the hemlock wraithfighter, which is a TIER NINE unit!!!! Seriously, try shrouding and then moving with one of these 'elite' aircraft. How in all the nine hells is this even possible?! The net result of this is that Guardians are essentially irrelevant in most contexts involving anything even remotely tactical, and Hemlock Wraithfighters aren't as versatile as Neophyte Hybrids in the shrouding context. (Step aside Space Marines, there's some new Neophyte Hybrid sheriffs in town!!!)

We're just getting warmed up! Maybe grab some popcorn? This legacy of broken Eldar dreams is pretty all-encompassing. Next on our list is the mighty AUTARCH, a guy with a jump-pack, which means he's super mobile, right? WRONG!!!! This weak-ass commander, who just got even weaker thanks to 'balancing' is slower than a turtle in peanut-butter; What small incentive you had keeping him lagging behind your army leading from the rear like a weak jackass (he's obscenely squishy) is now 100% gone thanks to the extremely well thought out (no sarcasm whatsoever) changes made to a faction that has almost no advantages for the first 3/4 of a match. Well done devs, bravo!

And now on to exhibit C, and my personal favorite: FRENZIED WEBWAY BLOODLUST!!!! Every Eldar player has marveled at how AI factions and neutral units are able to set aside their differences (and seemingly form temporary alliances) to pummel webway gates into oblivion, even at extreme personal cost. What a joke! I played a match with 3 buddies the other day and even when the AI was surrounded by 4 armies, it still attempted to destroy one of my gates... yeah that makes sense! Either revamp this absurd AI priority, or don't increase the cost of webway travel! OR, just freaking make webway gates tougher for crying out loud! The logical response at this point is: well, just move your units to secure them! What are you waiting for! Try doing that now with the increased webway travel cost! Or better yet, send your 'more than a match for the soldiery of lesser races' menacing 1-range Guardians through a webway gate with 10 umbras lurking nearby, or god help you a single squad of neophyte hybrids!!! Furthermore, why even have the webway constriction research? Putting any faith in this research is like investing in a company guaranteed to collapse and fail in the future. You're telling me this is A TIER TEN RESEARCH?! Who the hell even has any webway gates standing by even turn 40?! Good luck having even a handful of webway gates to travel through by the time you're ready to research this.

Now on to fire dragons; This is a pretty cool unit. Or at least it would be if they weren't so soft and absurdly vulnerable. It's too bad the moment they arrive on the field, they are pretty much targeted by everyone on the entire planet. Think of them as a mobile webway gate, (in terms of how bad the AI tries to savagely butcher them) but with 1 range, and almost no hit points.

This makes them about as useful as installing a screen door on a submarine.

It's hard to have anti-armor capabilities or be even remotely useful if you don't even last a single turn. Oh and they're really expensive, time-consuming to produce, and have a high upkeep, so that's really fun.

Devs, if you're following me up to this point, I'd like you to know that the Eldar play like a beaten child who has to tiptoe around the house to avoid further beatings while their toys are being smashed to pieces; That doesn't strike me as a deadly or technologically advanced race, but rather a faction that needs a little bit of overhaul.

[sulfire]

at least you know what not to research.

It gets kind of easy. race to getting wave serpents, relying on a swarm of rangers and guardian suicide squads to grab as many resource hexes as possible, and the dude to heal them, whilst saving up as much as possible to ply your weak commanders with tasty equipment. And pray you don't meet the chaos commander who one hits them. Or the level 3 venom crawler, who squashes a level 10 autarch with no thought. forget about the banshees, who squish like guardians, or the shining spears, who squish too.

kinda depressing.

they are remarkably weak, and make the entire game about surviving the first 40 turns and then beating the opponent for their bad AI