I think many Eldar players missed this. Eldar classes are highly specialized but lack flexibility: players must be ready to "read" the battle and change role. If you are flanked by heavy weapons go for Scorpion. If your enemies are spawning from a tank switch to Dragon. If you have to re-secure go for Avenger. Players who are only focused on a single class or on Killstreaks harm the rest of the team. But surely having VOIP would help us a lot. Before Xmas they said it was close, they just needed to fix a problem with client crashing
This is my go to approach when I'm Eldar side, and it's sad to see its usage dropping off - time was this is how the Eldar picked apart an LSM pug. Amusingly, playing Eldar has actually made me a better Heavy Bolter player: I've adopted the same flanking approach, and I can read an attempt at flanking much better.
This is something I'm getting better at. It's only been a few weeks, but I have a couple load outs for most classes by now, except swooping Hawks (I can't seem to accomplish anything with them, or dire avengers). You're completely right that eldar have to Change their role dependent on situation. This is exactly how they played on table top for years, and it's good to see it incoporated in EC. Whenever I see 3 rhinos and a pred rolling around, I switch to fire dragon with meltabomb pack and go zap tanks for a bit. If there's 3 devastator or havoc grouped on the balcony, I go to my staple SS and assassinate a few. If there's no warlocks, I do that. I usually pull out banshee if the enemy is spawning melee classes, and I dance around and bait them to run into open areas for support to shoot them down and I finish them off. It's taken awhile to learn how to see and understand where your group is lacking, but in general as eldar if I see a class missing I just do that sometimes Now. Except dark reaper...I find unless I can get a good vantage point of a battle without getting owned by melee and JPA, it's more deadly staying on the ground firing into your own troops to try to hit the enemy. I find this a huge issue inside buildings at capture points, depending on the map. Only exception to that is if your squad mates are smart enough to let u go forward and suppress or tempest doorways and ramps, but usually everyone gets over zealous and zergs the guy you are suppressing. Since you're usually focus fired, you don't see anyone on your flanks charging forward and I usually end up pelting some allies armor down a bit before I stop shooting. Which sucks because then they get into melee with almost half armor, not a good way to start the fight.
The Shuriken Cannon can get pretty brutal when used to flank, especially with the runspeed wargear. Coming at them from the sides or even the rear can clear your fire lanes a treat.
I'll have to try the run speed gear then! I looked at the bonus and it seemed so minimal that it may not be worth it. Does it stack over time then??
No, but it is noticeable. I usually run a Toughness build instead because I use the DR when a point defence/attack needs breaking, but the extra speed on a heavy does make it easier to reposition, so I keep the Fast Build around just in case.
We are the fastest moving faction and we need to exploit that first and foremost since this is the main strenght and advantage we got so moving around and utilizing running is always a first in any Eldar strategy and positioning. Then we gotta watch out for our weakness - lowest armor and health and toughness levels out of all factions. To counter that there isn't all that much to be done however I can offer an excellent tactic especially for Dire Avenger. Once you find yourself in 1on1 situation which is pretty regular even with others around it often takes for them (allies and enemies alike)couple of seconds to realise that you are fire locked with 1 enemy in a duel stand off. This strategy is pretty bold and does not involve cover most of the time. So you start firing your shuriken, try to aim for head and torso as you move sideways and here is the kicker: Fire short bursts (no more than 20-25 rounds per burst) and then dash in either left or right direction, continue firing and repeat the dash and fire again - always with aim (ctrl by default) mode when an enemy is more than 10-15 meters from you. If you're up close then obviously you don't need extra focus to hit every round. This technique gives you a number of great perks. First of all you don't receive any damage during dash (or rather ninja salto in our case) so its a little out of danger break. Most enemies don't realise it that you don't receive any damage during those 2 seconds it takes to dash so they will spit bullets and increase their spread. Chances are slim that an enemy will run out of the clip but it happens sometimes all thanks to that tactic! Secondly you'd be suprised how fast a Dire Avenger returns to aim mode after a dash and can continue on fire. I didn't check that properly but it seems we have that bit of advantage in this regard to other factions. We simply are more agile and I think game mechanics are slightly altered for Eldar when going in and out of aim mode even after a dash - I might be worng about this but it seems to me like thats the case. This tactic offers a great deal of advantages and alternatives. You can easily throw your opponent off balance with jumping around during a stand off or if things aren't looking bright for you, you can always use the second stamina point to try and dash away from an enemy and/or into cover. It buys you a bit of time to decide either on keep going or retreating if possible. Personally I always use twin-linked shuriken and didn't do proper testing of this on regular shuriken catapult so lets say for the moment this tactic works best with twin-linked shuriken Obviously I'm not saying do it every time you engage because there is nothing better like a good cover and/or ambush opportunity but often we find ourselves running from point to point and an enemy sees us and there is no immediate cover so we engage. I found this tactic to be a 90% win once in 1 on 1 and even if you're outnumbered you buy more time with this kind of hit and run/dash behaviour and as we know time is of an absolute essence in matches. When defending you buy couple of more seconds for your team to regroup as you hold 3 marines from advancing with that kind of tactic. When attacking it distracts the hell out of enemies who pride themselves marksmen yet they deal with slick elf just chewing through them as he/she evades skillfully their precise shooting. Try it out sometime and let me know what you think!
