I have to say this class is not for the feint or heart it takes some grueling practice to make the wings do what you want compared to the LSM CSM jumper classes, their weapons do in some ways feel kind of weak, they do a good job of disruption and scouting they have some of the best ability in the game to get up on high unassailable places to shoot you from. I am also not a big fan of a few smart bolt pistol rounds knocking them out of the air when they are flying. That being said i think in the eldars theme of "mobility" i think warp spider would have been a better fit for their "basic assault troop". for several reasons .... warp spiders have a lot more varying gear, they wouldn't necessitate rendering much higher on maps like the swooping hawks do, and they would have provided a more unique style of play to the eldar by allowing them to go through solid cover and objects and ambush and then leave again. their flush tactics within the context of the way the early maps have been made would have had a higher impact on play style of the eldar and factions that faced them as well as overall better tactical diversity .... i would have placed the banshees as the "GA equivalent" or ground assault. Lasblaster rifle Seems to be just fine in one context .... firing while on the ground, once you take anything airborne on the swooping hawk its accuracy goes down maybe a bit too much. Sun rifle. I have to say this weapon seems to be very touch and go or hit or miss on whether it works or not ive been on the receiving end of the rifle many times on SM and had it disorient me enough i couldn't even tell what was going on and i just ran somewhere and didn't make it .... but other times it seems to do almost nothing as far as disruption or very much for damage either ... its definitely reduced in effectiveness when taken airborne. Pigeon build. Pooping grenades .... this seems unrewarding at best ... as hard as it is to perform precise flight with the wings, IF you can soar directly over someone with no way to look down and see where you are going it would be nice if you hit the grenade button if it switched views and drew a bombing retical below you and you lost sight of where you where going until you dropped the nades. i havent got haywires yet so im not sure how effective a "haywire pigeon" is. What is this class missing ? whelp ... besides my preference for a different class to take its place i think it needs smoother flight controls maybe feel like an airplane or slow it down but make it very precise like a helicopter feel while up and go to a ground view when lining up your bombing runs, i would say if a weapon stuns it could knock them out of the air, but not just normal random rapid fire weapons that dont even stagger ... i know its technically exarch territory but i wish they could choose the eldar spear, or some one handed and pistol combos, or even a glimmer shield, the eldar wont at present design path have a unit that circumvents high emplaced heavy weapons by putting them into melee or in a worse position see if a hawk gets behind the line of HW on the second floor its likely not going to kill but 1 person in their ambush and they may not even get that since their dps at times seems very hit or miss and everyone near them will turn and fire. thankfully for them the eldar have a pretty solid HW lineup that tends to just "brute force" these type of encounters that really just needs some QoL(lob retical and range for tempest) adjustments. they also seem to lack the strata most similar avian infantry have in other factions ... and i get that the eldar are supposed to be more specialized but they have nothing but plasma grenades to use on vehicles until reaallly late, they don't seem to have alot of options for taking pen, or more cqc related weapons and i get that by fluff they don't until exarch but several times I've asked for completely sensible things people argue that they "need to be that way for game balance" because its impossible to balance an item that disagrees with their tastes of coarse. they have very limited options to effect high toughness targets as well, they are pretty much relegated to killing squishiest in the open or dropping above or behind entrenched troops and killing them from behind. And lets face it plenty of LSM and CSM have weapons normally reserved for Vets. due to flight being so weird without a vertical take of position escape is rarely an option either since when you clip things it seems to limit you to a weird U animation with a long landing time that is not conducive to defending yourself or attacking anyone. I just cant help but feel this class moves too clunky and its flight is hard to master and outside of those specific situations were they can engage from unreachable places doesnt pay off as well for all that flight training needed to get there. the JPA and stormboy just seem more natural and easy flowing in combat.
Personally, I feel they're too strong right now. Well, the flight at least. Too much speed, crossing the map in an instant.
Try to spend a bit more time with them. Your errors with the names of their weapons suggests you haven't given them enough time to learn their nuances. In the right hands (i.e. not mine) they're a menace to the enemy. They're also prime decappers.
fire dragons are not equipable by hawks.... i also mentioned haywire grenades ... just that they were reallly late in advancement.
i would say that this might be true in the hands of a seriously practiced vet .... but in the hands of a newbie just trying the class for the first time much and many frustration will abound with the control of said fast yet clunky flight. I have played the class a good 15 hours in total probably ... not one of my higher classes .... but i have played all the classes in the game at least enough to kill more than i die in a good game, i have been rank 5 on all factions more than once, and am presently at least rank 3 in each faction. I have given the hawks a good bit of experience on both sides of the coin ..... as opposed to HW which i pretty much forced myself to play for the sake of testing and learning as i enjoy the more aggressive tactic units, as eldar i can ussually be found playing striking scorpion or swooping hawk as the 2 fit my mentality and strategy to war better ..... Im not saying they aren't powerful necessarily im saying i wish they were more diverse and had more of the weapons iconic to thier path even if we strayed into exarch land .... plenty of marine weapons, and CSM weapons are normally vet only i see no problem sharing the love to the eldar. I wish they had an easier learning curve and more "tight" flight controls. What my real argument is is that as a basic class that will ultimately have to share half the assault role with banshees i think they feel too empty they don't have enough options or tools available to their class. they don't have weapons more geared towards tank hunting, or towards higher toughness targets, what exactly does a swooping hawk do if they fall in up high behind someone with 80+ extra toughness ? just lose ? or should there maybe be a kit option for them to deal with that. Its a tough place to be again the eldar are tricky because they are specialists if you make them too diverse they just seem silly and they don't match lore, but at the same time if you have every eldar player redeploying after every kill to get a different weapon to kill the other guy thats certainly not going to be a desirable place to be either. They also add quite a scale of difficulty to map building and balancing. As now much higher places need to be full rendered as opposed to background scenery .... more thought into .. is it ok if someone gets way up there and shoots at people. you wouldn't have had that to worry about with warp spiders you just would have had a single difficult to implement teleport, that you are likely going to have to implement later anyway for termies, sorcerers, seers, ect.
i dont know ... several times when one has tried to escape me on JPA and i was smartlocked i just squeezed off a few rounds on the bolt pistol and cancelled their flight ....
I have played them a ton in recent days, and they have grown on me. I have 3 Rules as a Hawk: 1. If you are attacking an enemy from the front, you are doing it wrong. 2. If you are shooting from the air, you are 99%* of the time doing it wrong. Just land behind the enemy. 3. Do not use the anti Infantry nades. *The 1% is if you are hovering literally 1 meter above a Heavyweopon. Then you are accurate enough to kill the enemy with headshots. I would tell you to land behind him in this situation too, but maybe there are a lot of other enemys. I use the Hawktalon, and as much survivability as I can get. But there are obviously problems that still need to be fixed. 1. Wingclipping. This mechanic (getting shot out of the air) is fine if you are flying super fast, then the enemy gets a chance to stop you. It is not OK when you are hovering. You are already standing still in the air, without cover, with decreased accuracy. There is NO need for the enemy to be able to shoot you down with 2 hits, which sends you in a lenghty falling animation, + a landing animation during which the enemy most certainly will kill you. (+ you take fall damage ). 2. The flying is only good for mobility. If Wingclipping wasn't a thing while hovering, it would already be better, but then it also shouldn't reduce accuracy. You can't kill shit while hovering. You don't even threaten the enemy. After 5 seconds, if they get annoyed by the occasional hit they will turn to you and shoot you down. 3. They have no range at all. This makes it useless to get on high places. You won't be able to shoot something from there. (Maybe this get's fixed with mods and different weaponbases). 4. Too long animations. (I think eveyone has those, but the hawk should be mobile ,and needs it for his playstlye). Most infuriating, the landing animation. No evade attack, no melee lock on. After dashing forward, long recovery animation making it useless if you want to go faster in that direction. 5. vs Enemy Jumptroops. Wingclipping them out of the air with a pistol.... And I swear a pistol with lock on or a Plasmapistol kills a Hawk faster than his Lasblaster kills the Assaultmarine... -_- (Not tested). 6. The grenades. They are so clunky to throw. I am hovering over my target, aiming at them and spamming the grenade button (or pressing it slowly), and sometimes I throw a grenade, sometimes 2 at once, often none. The Haywire could be pretty usefull if I could throw all of them reliably and in a reasonable time. 7. The spotting mechanics. I am flying above targets, seeing them, but I can't spot them for my team. This would also be the perfect place for wargear which increases the time enemys stay spotted. 8. (The blue trail behind me. It hurts my eyes.) This all leads to how you have to play them. Basically land directly behind the enemy and stab him in the back, or headshot them. Here is my Wishlist of not so high priority: -A way to regenerate health on their own. They are supposed to be behind enemy lines, they are harrasers. They can't stand still next to a Warlock. -Silenced weaponoptions. (I hope the Wings are silenced and don't show up on the enemy minimap.... probably not... -_-). This fit's into their playstyle of getting behind enemys. This could be options you can choose instead of more Thoughness or something else.
