I believe it's meant to be a device to enhance their targeting if I recall correctly... Now that Eldar have been on live for a while though, is anyone finding that DAs are less present than they should be? Currently we only have 5 classes, so if it's genuinely an issue now I feel as though it will become a real issue when our other two (fairly popular, might I add) classes are added.
Well, I often stand in a situation were we have a lot of Fire Dragons, a few Warlocks and Striking Scorpions, but next to no Dire Avengers, but usually there are someone present (depending on the map). I assume the lack of Dire Avengers could be due to their less than stellar ASC, which makes the Fire Dragon the better choice for CQB. Anyhow, there are no directly impairing lack of Dire Avengers most of the time, though I fear that the Fire Dragon would be next to useless when the "fix" the Melta Weapons, as he would be very limited (I know, Eldar overspecialization) and he might not get access to the Fire Pike (according to the latest Q&A it is causing some troubles).
The ASC is just not reliable, when a marine is interrupting a cap, the bolter is able to actually kill before its completed. Too often the shuriken is unable to do the same when both the shooter and target are completely still ADS. The other aspects are much more compelling, and will only be moreso when Banshees and hawks arrive.
bE - yes we'll make a tactical shooter game, where capping points is the most important thing forum - but will we have enough capping units bE - yes we'll make the bolter the go-to weapon so therell be tons of capping units forum - yawn, we want more toys bE - here have a sheild and a MoN forum - we cant kill sheilds and MoNs with bolter waaaaah bE - use plasma and melta and melee forum - yaaaah it works, but now we have few capping units bE has been enticing us further and further away from the basic capping units for ages now ... no surprise the eldar will suffer from the same effect
I don't think one class is enough. Compared to Marines and Chaos they got 2 out of 5 classes being able to cap. Eldar have 1 out of 7 (if you include yet to come Banshees and Swooping Hawks). This is totally unbalanced since we need to sacrifice more players in order to have every class on the field. Even at a current stage with 5 classes I find myself when I'm not DA hanging around an enemy point with few other Eldar and no one is able to cap and we just wait for DA to arrive and he/she rarely does, so yeah, its a pain to behold. I think one more class being able to cap wouldn't make Eldar OP. If anything it would even things out a little.
I wanna stop everyone there and say let us please not do the "should Eldar have more capping classes" debate thing again, it was almost as painful as the melee debate.. I guess it's more of a wait and see thing. It actually DOES seem as though it's going to be fairly diluted, especially before the ASC gets access to mods (which may or may not make a huge difference). It's a thin line with balance bE are playing here, but hey, it's always been this way! Guess we'll find out
Shuriken Catapult definitely needs some sort of change to it. Right now it just tickles marines and then they promptly 1080-no-hair you with their bolter/faster melee.
Independent of 1/7 vs 1/5 discussion, I think the problem with the DA is that it's just not fun to play- while Tacticals/Traitors have a variety of potent weaponry, the DA is stuck with a single (rather poor) weapon. Eldar are supposed to be specialists, but the DA doesn't really have any situation he specializes in. Nominally, his specialty is mid to short range combat- however, in 90% of scenarios, it is quite easy to turn mid range combat into short range combat. At that point, the Fire Dragon is much better than the DA. What's more, the DA will generally lose to a melee class that simply charges him from his optimal range- he doesn't have the range to start whittling him down over long distances, or the killing power to drop him over the short distance he has to travel to enter melee range. Weapon mods for the Catapult might fix this- the 700 LP's the DA's have to play around with will probably be put to good use- but for now, Dire Avengers aren't played much, because they can essentially cap, and that's it.
I firmly believe this is the only reason the Dire Avenger is under represented in-game at the moment, his one job is to be great at close range fire fights, and he isn't. The Shuriken Catapult just needs a little bump in damage, the accuracy doesn't bother me, it isn't supposed to be used at longer ranges anyways. Despite this I'm having fun with it, and I'm sure bE will tune it soon. I have faith in them.
