General Keys Spot enemies by pressing q. Mark points on the map by holding q. Do this often, as the nonverbal communication in our faction can use improvement. Press V and find other ways to communicate. Asking for hp and ammo also triggers a UI propt that allows allies to get you what you need if you let them. If it's not a warlock coming to your aide, you will have to stand still for them to deliever. Don't go alone! If you can help it, always try to stick with someone else. Ofc you will undoubtedly get seperated again, and there are instances where you must such as: Flanking Retreating Ambushing But reconnect with team mates when you can. Any class can interrupt. Only Dire Avengers can cap. An Eldar team only needs two classes to be effective enough to win. It needs DAs to cap, and it needs anti-armor to prevent the quick movements of the enemy and the ruin of fortifications. Everything else is situational and supports either of these roles. The only exception is on Defense so long as no point belongs to the enemy. Rescue With E and Rescue as much as you can. Get people back up, HOWEVER, if you are down, or a nearby team mate is down, wait till both of you are in a reasonable amount of cover. Getting someone back up in a full firefight without support, without cover is stupid and often sucicidal. Wait for relative safety, keep your eyes peeled, check your surroundings, head on a swivel, and yes, its OK to release the rescue button and continue fighting if your life becomes endangered - no one with sense will get mad at you if you let someone die at your feet because you're engaged. You must first help yourself before helping others. Melee: It's difficult and will often be a live balanced on a knife edge, literally, as the Eldar's highest Teired Weapon - the level at which durability and its impact is rated, higher numbers win in clashes - is a strong 2 powersword. A powerfist is T4, axes are T3. Most Ork weapons are T2 and above. Basics: The Rock Paper Scissors system is very simple. Each move counters one move, clashes with itself, and is countered by the third. Fast Attack Counters Powet Attack D Bash Counters Fast Attack Power Attack Counters D Bash Sprint Attack is attacking with a fast attack while sprinting. It is not countered by Dbash under 90% of the circumstances. It is generally a good idea to use as it's basically a free opening attack that can't be immediately countered. Everything is timing base and will need experience to truly grasp. In the mean time there are some tricks that will allow you to survive. Lock on is extremely useful when combat is 1v1. Use it when the nearest threat is dominating your screen. It will allow you to center your attacks on the threat. He will likely be using it already. Learn to let it go, and you can fight a 1v3. Let go of lock on if you're being flanked. Lock on will leave you vulnerable if you are dependent on it and still using it as more nearby threats appear. Lock on will let go of your control and peel your character in whatever direction the locked target goes, and if he moves away from the second or third threat, your back will be exposed and you die. Instead, if you find yourself in this situation where the odds start stacking against you, you must control the situation and start stacking the odds back into your favor. Let go of lock on, roll FORWARD, through the enemy if no further enemies are approaching past the 3 already on you. Ideally you want to be in a place that has an object to one side of you, but space to move. Don't get cornered. Getting stuck in a corner will be your death. When fighting, keep the enemy fighting themselves rather than you. Friendly clangs will disrupt attacks and leave large windows if opportunity. Getting the enemy to fight itself by staying in front of one enemy and rotating will cause the front enemy to stagger, allowing you to defeat him 1v1. Thus, done correctly, the fight quickly becomes a 1v1 the whole time rather than a 1v3. This is important to remember against fighting veteran players who will try to do this against you when you are fooled to believe that you have the advantage in a 3v1. If you want to beat them and retain that advantage, don't clang woth friendly players in melee. Lastly, Cover and Boxes. Eldar rely on getting into combat at the right time, and you can do this very easily by being behind cover and on boxes. As a TPS this game allows you to peak around corners aa well as being able to climb an abundance of objects - Reapers can't climb anything above chest height. This will put you at a huge advantage against melee characters, whom you can shoot down on (getting headshots) or Dbash as they climb. You'll figure out which works best for you. But they are extremely vulnerable in the climbing animation. If you come under fire, especially from a pistol, roll off the box, then climb right back on top, your climbing animation is faster than anything else and will constantly frustrate a melee centric team. Beware of Orks though. Even their pistols will hurt. A lot of great cover exists next to doors where enemies forget to check. Peak around the corner without poking your head out, check to see if multiple enemies are coming, and engage the 2nd or 3rd through, not the first. This robs the last one of his support (if you kill them) and is a fantastic ambush. You will find countless more places of opportunity as a scorpion later, and I would suggest moving around often if not a scorpion as Mon-Kiegh will undoubtedly read this and will also wisen to your tactics if you use the same one repeatedly. Move, randomize, keep your enemy searching, and never worry. Class Specific: Dire Avenger Boxes and cover are your ally as a new avenger. Boxes against melee, cover against ranged, vaultable cover for both. Your main objective as this class is capping points and CQC. You have limited wargear. Shuriken Catapult and the Twin Linked. I run with the Master Crafted Shuriken Catapult with a heavy barrel and textured grip. It takes a while to get these upgrades, but with them the weapon shoots with scapel precision. With practice you can turn that 3v1 melee into a 1v1 with you at the side peeling the enemy's flesh off the side of his face and not worry about hurting your ally. TLSC is powerful indeed, and spits out death like no one's business. Its short range and short ammo supply is largely its only downfall. The additional wargear is largely based on playstyle. Take extra heals if you want to survive longer on your own. Take extra ammo if you're confident you won't get badly injured while dispatching Mon-Kiegh from a comfortable distance. Lastly, plasma grenades stick to enemies until they roll out of them. They also explode when you shoot them. If enemies don't notice you, use it as an opener by hurling the grenade and immediately honing onto where it lands. Even if you miss, if the grenade lands nearby it will strip everyone nearby of a shield, allowing you to decimate entire squads before they even know what happened. Warlock Choose Protect if you can't trust your team or your team likes melee. Choose jinx if you can trust in your teams ranged firepower and stay near DAs, SHs, or DRs without their default weapon, the reaper launcher. Don't take destructor unless the enemy team has an abundance of Shield toting footsloggers as it's generally not the best option. Embolden is expensive but quite often worth it as it allows you to "fire and forget" your heals as once cast, it will fully heal a downed ally. Remember, allow players to crawl into cover lest they get annihilated by an even more lethal weapon like rokkits or plasma. Baneshee Even though it is the 2nd fastest infantry in the game, this class remains difficult to use for most, but it can be extremely potent. The scream is linked to your warcry key, which is T by default. It suppresses the enemy, (And friendlies!!!!) in a long but narrow cone preventing them shooting you accurately and causing some visual impairment via a purple effect. Lastly, it debuffs them by increasing all melee damage by a certain percentage, which makes a power attack against the target One Shot most enemies. Paired with Jinx the baneshee is a killing machine. However, the Baneshee is as fragile as it is agile with up to 6 stamina with upgrades. You can't quite be a berzerker with it, but if you learn to flank and watch the movements of your team, you can be a devestating calvary charge that obliterates the entire back line of an enemy. Fire Dragon Burn them all. Melta tanks and fusion gun the wounded metal beasts until they become a pleaeantly glowing husk. Its the most straightforward unit in the game. The enitre purpose is to literally kill every tank the enemy can throw at it. It's marginally effective against infantry, and unless your side is desperate for a cap/decap don't waste your time on a point. Your mission should therefore be considered two fold. Kill their tanks. Protect the Eldar's. If you have a waveserpent, resupply in a quite area before hunting again. If you have friends, this is easily the most effective you and buddy can do in a game together. Riding together in a flying tank, whipping past a victim, running full tilt next to its hull, throwing two Meltas onto it, and either redeploying or climbing back into the tank yiur friend is piloting and whisking away to the next target. If as much as HALF of the enemy pulls out anti-tank just for you two, you know you've done your job right. Just keep moving and the enemy will never catch you. Swooping Hawk Fastest unit in the game. Sunrifle and Hawks talon are both surprisingly effective. Ditch the grenades for the most part if you aren't working with anyone, otherwise Haywire is good to disable tanks if there is a nearby firedragon. Flying solo though, it's best to invest your time and loadout into armor and the best damage you can get. You want to be the harrassment unit the enemy CANNOT ignore. Learning to fly takes practice. Fly around in the garrison for a while, do some daredevil stunts before going to PvP. Once there, fly above and behind the enemy, turn and shoot down at them. The more they try to deal with you, the less they can deal with your team, effectively catching them in killzones is your craft. Slowing enemies down on their rush to points is an equally effective tactic, allowing them to stagger in one by one rather than all at once. You will see the level design in a much different way once you can fly. There are a dizzying amount of things you will learn about the maps once you see them from this perspective you can transfer to other classes as well. Striking Scorpion Find new roads. Probably your best motto. There's so many places that become your territory as a scorpion on these maps it's crazy. Like the DA, ambushes as Striking Scorpion can be devestating. Again, boxes and crates are your friend to help you create a thousand possibilities as to where you might be. Tossing and shooting grenades into a pack of enemies is almost criminally easy to do, and allows your chainsword to easily deliver killing blows. You can't stealth decap anymore, but never underestimate the enemies ability to leave a point ungaurded especially if your team is dealing with them. Sieze your opportunity to win the game and add buckets of xp. You can easily become a problem to most enemies if you roam the map and find out where their reinforcements are coming from, back off and allow them to come to you. Cutting down the supplies hampers the enemies ability to threaten points. Plus it often nets you a decent haul of executions and rage filled vows at the end of the game. Dark Reaper The ultimate sniper who's best friend is the Falcon tank. Use the startshot to kill tanks and enemies in cover. The Starshot is the secondary mode of fire and can he pulled to wherever you aim it so long as you stayed zoomed. This allows you to shoot over cover, around corners, through windows, between objects, and even blindfire things like quad cannons and tanks you can't even see as you wrap your shot around buildings. Use the falcon to murder countless enemies from a safe distance. The other two weapons are still pretty decent and I would honestly recommend getting the Invocation of Kurnos while flying solo with them. The speed allows you to keep up with the warhost and quickly get into position which is what the DR is all about. The Shuriken Cannon should be braced whenever you fire, it can decapate foes quickly with needle like aim, and if you find a jinx warlock, become his best friend. He will award you with an easy, EASY, 30+ kills in a game. You will chew through targets so quickly you will literally not want to play anything else as whole squads evaporate before you two. Move positions often and carry extra ammo. The temptest launcher is an amazing weapon that basically renders all cover useless. It takes a great deal of practice to use effectively and right now it's not only bugged, it's incomplete. It will kill you often. However. This thing shoots miniture plasma grenades. With 4 salvos before overheat you can do what DAs and SSs do with their grenades in a single salvo. Two and three is almost assured destruction. It has problems shooting through windows, but if you crouch about 3-4 feet behind a railing, you can engage in a firefight without being in danger to a foe who is on the same level as you. Anything below yo can't even see you. This weapon is extremely good at dealing with large mobs of melee centric troops. Always have a loadout with one to deal with Orks and SMs who decide to spam melee and send them back reeling as they die in droves. Just remember to shoot at their feet and surroundings if you're not confident at nailing them. With practice you can arch the shots to land directly on their heads if they cower in cover for easy multikills. You can get triple and quad kills very easily with this if the enemy team is "cooperating" with your skills - denying them cover brings out the best of the Eldar, whom, if you're with you team an not shooting them in the back (seriously, this weapon is dangerous) they will easily crush them as they flee with 1/4 of their armor left in tact. Tanks Obviously good at roadkilling, but that isn't really their main strength or purpose. They are fast. Reallly fast. They also require minimal crew. Allowing you to drive circles around the point, running idiots over that come in your way like any other tank, and keep going to deploy 5-10 Eldar in a location a Rhino would take many more seconds to get to. The grav tanks are not meant to take a beating and the lawnmower effect will likely not last forever. It is becoming of you to not become reliant on it. Use it like a bombing run, punch straight through their infantry line and keep going to where you're needed. The TWSCans are powerful enough to slice open many more you cant reach as you pass. The Eldar play like the Mongols. Their trusted steeds too much for the lesser races to handle, circling the points and devestating anything that stays still for too long. To a Mongol, their horse was an extension of themselves. To lose it in battle was devestation. The basic strategy to win as eldar is pretty much the basic strategy for all races. 1st. Kill their tanks, protect yours. 2. Protect your points, take theirs. Sometimes there are exceptions. For example all capture points grant extra time to the match. It is to your benefit as an attacker to cap them all even if you lose one. As a defender, it is sometimes beneficial to lose one point to protect the others better. Attackers cannot win if they one capped a single point the whole game. I hope this helps the new Eldar. We welcome you to this great faction, pardon the dust, we're still a WIP. Edit: there will be edits to this in the near future. To make things more clear and easier to read.
Okay silly question but do all the little trinkets stack or not, I can't find a thing on it. For example armour regen delay 3% increase and armour regen 5% increase do they combine to 8% or does the system just take the highest value.
They DO stack. Spell effects are the one's that no longer stack. You won't get multiple instances of Embolden or Protect anymore for example.
Excellent post but can I throw my thoughts on a few observations? Shouldn't you mention your inherent speed advantage in melee? The fact that you can disengage easier and that you absolutely should do this when necessary? Also as you said elsewhere your climbing animation is faster so if you're a ranged class and get stuck in melee you can vault outta there quicker than other races then turn and return fire. It is considered a "fast attack" as far as I'm aware so the Dbash should counter it and the fast attack will clang with it. It's definitely worthwhile at times cancelling the lock-on but I wouldn't recommend it for new players and I don't know if new (or any for that matter!) players should be taking on 3 enemies in melee by themselves anyway This is definitely good advice - particularly with regards cancelling the lock on but in a situation when I'm overextended in melee I'd always drop a nade. Always. Get your back to a wall, hope they enemy are smacking each other in the back rather than attacking you and drop a nade. With practice you'll be able to time a dodge roll so that the nade does no damage to you but potentially drops the enemies. Or at least staggers them for a safe(ish) retreat. The other advice of course is to run. Which is what the race is suited for. Lead your enemies into a position where they have weakened themselves or are open to a trap. Orks at least will follow a weakened Eldar almost irrespective of where they are led. Best thing to do if the odds are in your favour in melee but the enemy is crowded is to either position yourself so that you can attack from the flank or behind or shoot them. As you said - never clang. Just a few things I thought while reading this - I hope it's useful. Nice guide.
Well, as an Eldar. You need to dbash, than vault. SOMETIMES this might work. But LSM fast attacks cover such a vast distance that once they hit you mid-sprint, you wont be able to get away. Pile on top of that the extra delay Eldar have after the Dbash, and rolling becomes more difficult. Most of this is due to lack of polish on our animations. But it is true LSM cover a ridiculous distance with their fast attacks.
I want to point out @Gazrick that Eldar grenades can't be thrown like other races. They'll often get stuck trying to arm them so you do nothing when you have to be extra quick about it. It's why I didn't include it. I will have to add that grenades stuck to enemies that charge into you will kill you too if you melee them, this applies to shields which will break the shield and otherwise stun them, but they'll survive and the Eldar will die. But if you want an easy target to hit after you've thrown a grenade, storm shields are practically magnetic, and very easy to spot a plasma grenade long enough to shoot, stun, and kill ground assaults. It's a great counter for DAs. The speed advantage isn't applied uniformly across the race. Not everything an Eldar does in melee is faster, so I left it at the line, "melee is about timing. It takes practice to figure out" which is true, you can't rely on the speed to win, nor will it save you if you run away as melee can just fast attack to catch up to you. So, to help a new player avoid this happening to them as a T1 weapon it's actually best for them to NOT run from a melee if running is the only alternative. It's usually already too late unless you can roll past them and just sprint from there, that's about the only way to escape melee without something getting in the way. The only exception to this is the swooping hawk who generally does not want to be in melee if at all possible. If they can't do this; stand and fight, and preplan the melee, to use the terrain to their advantage as much as possible. There is something I need to add though to the DA section so thanks for the feedback.
Yea stick em and roll. Classic Eldar banter! I'm not saying it's an ideal strategy but when you're outnumbered I'd say it's at least as viable and far easier to do than your 1 v 3 space control tactic. I mean you're asking a lot of new players I think but this is simple, drop a nade and pray to Khaine! I get not everything an Eldar does in melee is faster. I'm talking in particular about your ability to engage and disengage easily. As an Ork main your classes are very difficult to pin down once they leg it. Neither fast attack nor strong attack will catch up to you. I also think you're considering only swords here, even on the SM side; only the fast attacks of their swords are enough to catch the fleeing Eldar surely? Knives, Fists, Axes and everything in between shouldn't get you. Plus if they're caught doing a Dbash animation they might as well forget they ever saw you. Is this a guide for SM only then? What about when you fight us lovable greenskins? All my points apply then! Might help you avoid future Krumpins!
So it won't let me do the edits from my phone but I'll he adding: Planning your escape before being engaged. Having a wall to vault over and break line of sight / melee is extremely effective after performing a dbash. As a DA, using vaultable windows is an excellent tactic to completely nullify an Assault Rush. Simply flip over the window as they rush towards you on your side, turn, shoot, and flip back as they vault over. Turn shoot, repeat as necessary. You can do this on a whike array of objects, just be sure to back uo a bit as you turn because their melee weapons can still strike you if you're too close. This is halariously effective near areas like cap point A on Pegasus, where they'll attempt to run through the door. Hang out by the window corner as far away from them as possible and strike down the guy coming at you. If you don't think you'll succeed in time flip over the ledge and suddenly he can either risk climbing over the ledge as you pelt him, or he has to run all the way around while you punish the hell out of him. There is no counter to this, it is a tactic that requires an equally committed tactic in order to defeat, so it will serve you well as a DA.... And can even be used by other classes.
