True, but you also have to rely on people trying to use those hard counters, instead of taking the lemming approach and thinking THIS time they can run past the bullets instead of looking for alternatives. Even a Tactical marine can get the jump on a stationed bolter if they move for a secondary opening that the gun's not covering, as can classes that don't do well against melee are capable of either working out of a melee long enough to shoot the aggressor's face or using the dodges, vaults, and other attempts of movement to seek out buddies that can deal with it if needbe.
Guys, from the devs talk to the examples they showed, how they balance between factions is by metrics. Numbers, stats, all tied to classes and weapons for them to make the decisions. Things that are WAY to successful compared to other things gets a nerf, things that are unsuccessful compared to it's opposition gets a buff. They have ideal situations that they aim for, and numbers based on us to tell them what is OP or not.
That's also one of the underlying issues, EC currently doesn't have a good tutorial, and the garrison is lackluster atm. It's why new players think melee is op, because they don't what what a defensive bash is even.
Hey, let's try this civil. First I'll respond to your statement, and then propose a counter-argument. I don't think the SS is necessarily a better back line harasser than jump melee. Yes the SS can stealth, but jump have so much range, maneuverability, and alpha strike potential. SS are definitely forced to camp an area to get their best potential, and once they attack they're as vulnerable as any other ground assault. During the cap as long as you give visual sweeps of the point it's pretty easy to stop them, and jump melee with their bounding range are very capable of swarming a cap point and stopping it, so I don't see that as unbalanced. The DA used to be a troop tax on eldar, and I think anyone who argued against that was faction biased. The ASC had so much damage dropoff you might as well melee the enemy you were so close. The new ASC is a total change, I took it out in the garrison and the number dropoff was along the lines of the old boltgun (which surprise has also had it's range extended). And yes it has a 55 mag, but it does 20 damage per shot (compared to 30 mag and 38 damage boltgun). It makes up that difference in RoF, and while you can eke out a little more dps up close, once you start walking out the range it's a lot less controlled than the boltgun. So eldar tankiness. I've done the math, I posted the math all over the place awhile ago, if you want to verify my numbers feel free to. The difference between 80 toughness (light eldar) and 100 toughness (everyone else) is one shot from a basic weapon. It takes an extra shot on the ASC (~.08 second extra TTK) and one shot with the boltgun (~.18 seconds extra TTK). Now, if you reduce the toughness on the DA, it will not change the TTK at all with any weapon. All base weapons (ASC, boltgun, shoota, chainsword, knife, choppa) have a penetration of 80, so they already do max damage. With regards to armour, because of the extra damage on the final round, you would have to drop light eldar armour down to 66 before it makes a difference (266, the combined health and armour in that scenario, is exactly 7 bolt rounds to kill). That's 34 points lost from either armour or health. Not brought up here, but oft mentioned is the eldar speed advantage, because they move so fast they're harder to hit. But because the eldar suffer the greatest accuracy penalty for movement, they don't gain a real advantage, they cancel each other out. What the higher speed does do is allow eldar shooters (and melee) to get closer and into their CQC range, where they are dominant. As for hitboxes, I don't think there's that much difference from eldar to SM, but orks certainly got the short straw there, and I think the headshot multiplier on orks should be lessened to compensate. So that's my response to your statement, and a couple of other things. My counter-argument follows: All sorts of complaints have come up about eldar since patch 23, and yet the three changes I've actually seen from that patch are, 1) The ASC got buffed. And honestly I think it might be a little too good. The RoF could be dropped to reduce dps, but keep the weapon performing the same. 2) Howling banshees became a big thing. Not only did eldar gain a frontline melee unit to tie up enemy melee on the advance (instead of DAs taking the hit) they also have their scream suppression, which lets the whole army close the gap on the charge. It's really defined the eldar meta, I prefer a HB over a warlock when heading on a point. 3) Character wipes and advancement walls. Toughness gets berated a lot because of how easily SM can overcome it with plasma, but eldar don't have that. Without high toughness builds the DA, SW, DR shuriken cannon, and SS are all much more potent. As levels are accrued and builds fleshed out (as we saw with chaos already) eldar power suffers. And full stop. Eldar went from a joke that required excellent coordination to a powerhouse in one patch. The hitboxes didn't change, the speed didn't change, the toughness didn't change. All those things are the same as previous patches when the eldar were an easy kill. They aren't responsible for the change in power, because they didn't change. And no argument, the day the patch came out was crazy. Eldar swept the board like CSM once did. And yet day two I saw a lot of chaos clans adapt. They stopped getting in point blank firefights and started keeping their distance where eldar don't have any weapons except DR. Their traitor assaults stopped piling in and getting surrounded and gunned down, and formed more lines to hold back eldar rushes. LSM are just starting to catch on. Any squad composed of 6 shield GA and a Wolf Priest is going to get ripped apart. They will be tied up in melee by HB, they will be surrounded, and they will be gunned down. Matches where I've seen LSM form gunlines they've held their own, they've pushed back. They have all the tools to drop eldar from outside CQC and they need to use them. Orks are in a crummy spot, no lie. It's not just eldar that are giving them problems. The shoota is usable but still impractical (especially in such a melee heavy faction) and a lot of their gear is "like SM but worse" without anything to make up for that. Are they going to be redefined by the Waaagh! mechanic? How much balance comes with the power klaw? I can't tell you, but we can agree that orks themselves need the buff.
Alright, can you post these statistics? And despite this, many players, myself included, across multiple factions have losing or very hard pressed against eldar teams. We find ourselves in situations that we have little control over, and we're trying to discuss issues. Regardless of the devs choices, we still have the right to discuss CIVILLY NO LOCK PLS what we believe are balance issues. Currently I believe that the Eldar faction is doing a lot better than the other factions due to server hit detection, their smaller hitbox, their increase movement/strafe speed, and their recent buff. Due to their current durability and their movement speed allowing them to avoid/dodge damage all together.
Then what's your remedy? Less Armor/HP? I for one think the concept of having the in-game armor equipment presents a few problems. For one, it's limiting what the options are. It fixes Eldar onto a single path. They NEED that advanced armor to be competitive. Without it, they're weak. Like, extremely weak. The damage reduction you're getting from having 100 Toughness base isn't to be taken lightly. Especially the 135 Toughness from your Armor. Don't ignore that. It's extremely powerful. Let's look at the numbers, though. 17.6% damage reduction against a 20 damage weapon with your Relic Armor. That's 16.48 damage from a Shuriken Catapult per shot at 12.5 r/sec(750 RPM). If you had 200 HP and 120 Armor, that's 320 damage that needs to get done. At 206 damage/sec (16.48 * 12.5), you would need 1.5 seconds to be killed by a Dire Avenger, assuming he lands nothing but body shots, but hits every shot at <14m. Now let's flip it. 9.8% damage reduction against 38 damage with our Advanced Armor. That adds up to 34.2 damage with a Bolter against a Dire Avenger at 5.5 r/sec(333.33 RPM). If we had the 200 HP and 125 Armor, you need to hit through 325 damage to kill us. You'll deal 188 damage/sec (34.2 * 5.5), you'll be killed in 1.7 seconds, assuming you land nothing but body shots and hit every shot at <20m. .2 seconds is not a long time. .2 seconds is almost negligible, even though Eldar are, by lore, TT, and design, supposed to beat LSM in close range engagements. I can understand the slim figure of Eldar make us harder to hit, but that's not really an excuse, since your Apothecary is a mobile healing beacon that will move defensive positions up further and further, which are exceedingly difficult to break. There's more than one factor that comes into play here with this patch, though. The problem that came with this patch's DA isn't their durability. It's actually something that we asked a little relief for, but got a massive relief for. The fall off damage dramatically decreased for Shuriken Catapult as well as an increase in our optimal range from 8m to 12m. What would be almost a 50% decrease in damage at 20m, we now see something more like 7-15% from 20m all the way up to 30m. The exact number is unknown, due to the Garrison numbers being bugged (ironic), but it's clear it was drastically decreased. This is likely causing the issues that LSM players are seeing with Dire Avenger. But, make no mistake, you still out damage us at range. What was our break point (range) became the equivalent of you fighting us in close range. Instead of LSM massively out damaging us far away and forcing us to get in close, we are now able to trade with LSM at a distance before closing in, which changed the dynamic that people were accustom to playing against.
Yeah, but it's THEIR argument. I'm telling you to get your own. Fucking moochers. :^) I hate typing this face because it makes me feel like a filthy memelord. Ironic coming from the 'Angry Marine'.
OH, hey, that was me driving that. I said, "Oh, we're not going to be able to stop this one, guys. Oh, crap, there's a Falcon on the point. Hold my beer, I got this." To be fair, though, we wanted to test the combat at C. We pushed everyone back to C except the pugs, which was like 4 people, and let you take A/B. Everyone knows that Zedek is horrible for A/B, so we wanted to push it to C to test how feasable an attack on C is from B. There's still some tuning that needs to be done, since you couldn't push it after over 7 minutes, so we decided to push you back to A. Unfortunately, the time ran out and everyone went for kills instead of fighting, which was a problem for holding B. You guys were extremely uncoordinated, though. You kept running at our Dark Reaper line and systematically died. Over and over again.
