[DC 1.51]Necron Balance Issues.

[crimtonic]

I want to cover a few things that make the Necron over powered as compared to the other armies. These include Flayed Ones swarming and Tomb Spider, Necron Lord persistent death/respawn location and delete/Mass Revival.



Let me make this as clear as I can, I do not want to see the Necrons nerfed, I want to see them balanced.




Background

As has been noted by many DC players, Necrons tend to swarm Flayed Ones, dispite being only mildly better than their basic infantry, and costing a hundred and twenty five times as much, they have proved to be extremely effective to the point of excess.



A major issue with Necron is the persistence of two units; the Necron Lord and Tomb Spiders. These units will respawn wherever they were killed, this can be a problem since usually other dead Necron units are near by and these two unit classes can respawn those units. If either of these units is at or near your base it is likely they will revive and army right inside it. This leades inevitably to your demise as you must camp your own base.



The Necron lord has one other insidious little trick, Mass Revival. In skirmishes players will build up a large swarm of units, then select them and hit ‘delete’ this causes the units to suicide, or self destruct. With Necron Body Persistance, these units will be able to be revived by Tomb Spiders or Necron Lords. With Tomb Spiders you can make other classes of units for free and with Necron Lords you can double your max unit cap for Infantry.




The Balance Issue


Flayed Ones Swarming:
Simply put, these units are the new terminators. They are mildly effective against vehicles, but against infantry they are unstoppable. With their ability to terrify the living crap out of any near by infantry, their 70-85 attack, 8 reinforce cap, and their longevity, they prove quite vicious against infantry. Add to that the ability to teleport to any visible location, means you will not likely be able to use the exceptional range and firepower of tau, nor the withering fire of Eldar before they close with your units and eat them alive.



Most often than not these units (kept reinforced) can tear through substantially bigger forces, even those including light vehicles. They are not as invincible as termies were, but close enough to be a balance issue.



Necron Lord and Tomb Spider Body Persistence:
This problem is well documented in other threads, Necron/Tomb Spider(s) are in your base when they attack. After you defeat their sorry excuse for a rush, they come back to life and being reviving the attack force right inside your base. This causes you to camp home, and leaves you unable to attack or finish the enemy base. Meaning inevitably they will kill you.



Unit Cap Bypass (Mass Revival):
Build, Delete, Mass Revival, Build. “Hey look 12 Warrior Squads! Those are Immortals dude, no they are friggen wraiths. Idiots cant you tell the color grey from the color of skinned flesh? Those are Flayed Ones.”



“And you thought they were capped at 6 sqauds.”



I think you get it.



Free Unit Upgrades:
Tomb Spiders can produce Immortals and Flayed Ones for no power cost. This can be done by suiciding your Necron Warriors (built for free, and kept un-reinforced) and then collecting their corpses. Once you have enough, wham free units that would normally cost 125+

Solutions:


Flayed Ones Swarming:
I have three solutions for this starting with my favorite;



--Make them cost 160 per squad, reinforce for 40 and slightly increase reinforcement time. This should make them harder to acquire and more expensive to field.



--Weaken their attack to 50-65 from 70-85



--Add a hardcap at 4 (20/3 = 6, 6-2 = 4)





Necron Lord and Tomb Spider Body Persistence:
Remove Necron Lord and Tomb Spider Body Persistence (after original construction)




Unit Cap Bypass:
This one is surprisingly easy to reasolve; Some would suggest not allowing the Mass Revival ability to exceed the Unit Cap, but I feel that’d make it Entirely useless as an ability. Instead I suggest simply removing Body Persistence of deleted units. This way, it only works on units your enemy has killed. These units will most likely be in your enemies territory thus solving the problem.



Free Unit Upgrades: Same as above.



Thankyous:
Thanks for your time, I do appreciate all the hard work you guys and gals put into this game, and keeping us losers happy with it. That goes for the Mods too.



I hope I have been of assistance, if I have made errors in the format, please let me know so I can correct them to give you better information.





Change title - Akranadas

[ImmortalChaos]

I like the hardcap idea for flayed ones. However, I'm really undecided on the other 2, because getting over 20 cap is a LOT, even if you have to wait for your opponent to kill them. I think limiting it at the cap of 20 would be FINE, because you can still get a 20/20 army for free instantly.

[Kronickle]

Yeah, a 1/2 dead army once you revive them. Someone already stated 2 artillery shots will finish them. If you want to hardcap Flayed then also please hardcap PSM's/Zerks/Shees. I've seen posts complaining Necs are helpless against those CC rushes so please be fair.

[eventhorizon]

I believe it was noted that the max cap Necrons can achieve is 35 pop. And most of them will then be at Orange/Red HP. Not too much of an issue if you have an artillery piece or a decent sized shooting force to finish them up.

[ImmortalChaos]

PSM are hardcapped.

Zerks and shees need not be because they are weaker, can't deepstrike, and cant break everyones morale.

I think that my selection from his possible changes (and all his other selections, I just like those ones the best) are very fair.

I play necrons a lot right now, and I know the rez orb army is way too much. Getting 18/20 for free is NUTS even if its half hp.

[Akranadas]

Now thats a Balance Issue Post.

Although you had the title wrong, but I corrected it. Well Done

[Vokkan]

I say they should pay at least something for their basic warriors and that the cap-override shouldn't go over 25.
Having the enemy resurrecting units inside your base feel very wrong, since deepstriking is pretty "safe" compared to it.
How about changing the ressurection orb into some sort of passive ability?

[Sniper]

Now thats a Balance Issue Post.

Although you had the title wrong, but I corrected it. Well Done

It's basically what I said in my own thread. Sigh.

[Chris]

An issue I see with flayed ones is that their morale drain is brought into effect as soon as they start to pull themselves out the ground, however AFAIK they cannot take damage until they have fully emerged. If there are multiple squads deepstriking then really the only option is all out retreat because there's simply nothing you can do until they're fully emerged by which point you have already started to take morale damage.

[purge383]

Flayed Ones Swarming
When they summon flayed ones, back up. None of the units they'll have at the start of tier 2 where this tactic is normally used to greatest effect can chase you down shooting you or hurting you except wraiths. Once the flayed ones are summoned and have to slowly walk up to you to attack, they are much less threatening. The reason they are so bad if you stand there and let them beat on you is because they break your morale which makes your units very ineffective.

Necron Lord and Tomb Spider Body Persistence
The only rush a Necron player can do is with the Necron Lord himself. Necron warriors are too slow moving and too slow to build at the start of the game to rush with, although maybe its possible if you don't build a necron lord or scarabs but I still think it would fail abysmally because of their slow movement.

If the Necron Lord is dead in your base, hes not with his army(you dont even have to scout to know) casting his awesome spells or using passive abilities such as with the orb of ressurection, which is a huge disadvantage for the necron army. Plus they have no detection for their army unless they bring along scarabs which you could quickly dispatch. Attack!, attack!, attack!

Unit Cap Bypass
Ressurection is debatable. I think they shold put a cap on the number of squads it can revive, but still should be able to pass unit cap.

Free Unit Upgrades
In practice, this would be a very inefficient tactic. Walking across the map with slow Necron warriors to a point he is defending, dying easily probably triggering a counter attack since your down a squad, and coming back with a tomb crawler into his territory to a point he is defending is not very viable against a modest opponent. You'd be much better off massing necron warriors(if you only wanna go with free units) reinforced squads and attacking all at once, then using ressurection with NL.

[Kronickle]

Sorry bout the PSM's, my mistake. However Shees do break morale and Zerks have none.

How can a Nec player fend off an early Zerk rush? (besides "not letting them get made"), cuz that argument can be used for Flayed too.

Nec players kill thier own troops to revive them 1/2 dead. Commissars kill thier own troops to make them DO 3 TIMES THE DAMAGE. I'd take a full pop cap of plasma GM x3 Dps and rechargeable morale > NW's (not to mention better vehicles/range/mine or turret the dead NW).

In that case Necrons aren't so imba after all. They can't just roll over everybody, certain races are just weaker against certain others; this isn't a "Necron only issue" IMHO.

[InReverie]

Obviously there haven't been enough Eldar playing against Necs.

I'm 3 for 3 against ANY team combination that includes Necs while playing Eldar and having teammates who knew what they were doing. Eldar are the anti-Nec race. Chaos Zerks and Demons are both proficient at running into Nec bases and blowing things up real nice, but they're not great at anti-infantry when it comes to Necs. Plasma should help, though.

[Vokkan]

Am I the only one thinking that necrons basic infantrys ability to eating buildings is overpowered? No LP or Turret stand for more than a few sec, and I've never seen an HQ go down as fast as when they've massed at it.
It's way past Fire Dragons.

[InReverie]

Necrons are better from range than they are in Melee. They are still proficient enough in CC, but nowhere near as effective.

Vokkan, it's pretty obvious that you're an IG player, and I sympathize with you in the fact that I've been playing a lot of Necron lately. They truly do eat everything that IG can bring to the table in earlier Tiers. Later Tiers too, for that matter. IG need a higher Ogryn cap or they will be destroyed by Necs.

[Incurus]

The necron delete / revive cheese is disgusting, and considering that necron units regen and reinforce, then when everything is dead again -pop- reincarnate

I think that when someone force deletes a unit, its removed from game rather than persistant is a great idea, and one which would solve this problem very easily, dealing with a 20unit cap then having them come back at 1/2half is one thing..

dealing with a 35unit cap, then having them come back is a LOT harder, especially since with the delete/revive cheese your actual cap limit doesnt matter

[a_Necron_Lord01]

Since the mentioning of IG getting tore up by Necrons has been raised, I think you should try using...

Darn what are those things that kill my Necron troops all day long....

I should know this....

Kind of a long word....

Makes a huge explosion that knocks all my troops down....

Does a bunch of damage to them....

My troops are so slow they will get hit 5 or 6 times by them before being cut down by a GM squad.....

I think it's a mythological monster.....

Oh yeah, thats right. Basilisks.

Necrons are slow. You should exploit that avenue as a strategy.

@Incurus

You and everyone else who mention the "cheese" of the Rez Orb seem to think it's some magical bug that allows it to happen. The description of the item says it allows the Necrons to exceed the pop cap.

I would assume the reason the Devs did that is because having your "giant" army of 2x Flayed Ones, 2x Immortals, 2x Warriors and 1x Wraith really wasn't all that big and being able to have one more flayed one, 2 more immortals and 2 more warriors all of which are at half (or usally less) life wasn't that big of an IMBA.

As has been stated in this thread and several hundred others, if your Necron opponent has the resources to build an entire army, delete it and rebuild the entire army then the problem isn't imbalance, the problem is you were doing nothing and waiting for your opponent to attack.

It would be like crying Imbalance against IG because they can attack you with a Baneblade after you sat in your base and let them take the whole map.

[dreddnott]

I don't think it would really hurt the Necrons that much if deleting soldiers made them disappear permanently.

The key here is also that Tomb Spyders can harvest free Necron Warriors from the Monolith once you 'delete' them and spit out Immortals and Flayed Ones for free.

Go to Tak's thread in the Battle Archives forum, look at my replay in the first reply - I went up against IG, the poor guy tried to out-turtle me. I didn't use delete at all or the Tomb Spyder ability more than once or twice and utterly slaughtered his army.

EDIT: I'm not shouting out for nerfing the Necrons. I really do like them the way they are - people just aren't exploiting their weaknesses enough. I've suffered a lot at the hands and chainaxes of manic Khorne Berserkers as well as the merciless bombardments of Imperial Basilisk artillery tanks.

I also believe that the Necrons as implemented in Dark Crusade are by far the most true to the tabletop out of any of the seven races in so far. I have a medium-sized miniature army, as a matter of fact. I get a lot of complaints from people in real life and on forums about how Necrons are overpowered in the tabletop game, but I'm pretty sure they're not actually imbalanced there either.

Also, I would like to point out that Flayed Ones really aren't that great. Berserkers as mentioned above will really mess them up. They have every time I've played or watched a replay. They're WORTHLESS without that deepstrike ability, nearly useless against vehicles or anything that moves faster than a retarded stillborn kitten if they don't get behind it. They don't have a projectile attack.

Masses of infantry were made for artillery to hit, you know. I'd like to see some flayed one spam in a replay to see what's really going on.

[Kronickle]

Yeah, let's keep it true to tabletop. Necrons are SUPPOSED to be feared and hard to kill. You can always use them for yourself and see how people beat their supposedly imba tactics. Once enough replays get posted, it will be obvious that they can be beat regularly.

[Incurus]

I have no problem with the res toy being used on "legit" corpses, just being used on the deleted ones, which allows the spam to be done, more often than not, if you have a huge army of dead people in a funnell to or around your base, a couple of turrents aoe types and the like solve it..

Its when you get a 35/20 cap, when you have say capped points attack with it and then rez it back up due to deleted units, THATS wrong, and a lame tactic imho.

And i have been playing necrons, a fully upgraded necron warrior spam is FAR too effective imho, but yes they do have reactions and they are beatable.. specifically, tau dancing and IG commissinar (sp?) morale helping spam can be incredibly effective, but the deleting units and then reviving them feel more like a bug to me

[Pequod00]

In 1vs1 maps you never stop a necron, they have free heavy infantry and their reinfort only 30 of energy OMG they are HEAVY infantry. You only have ifantry to cap points and the necrons rush to you in a few minutes with 8 necron warriors and their hero, you have nothing to do because you have only infantry and need cap points to get more or upgrades, you cant defent your points or move around the map because they are in your base smashing your face.

Examp: 6 sm + 4 scouts with sniper rifle only get down 2 necron warriors before die, and game over they have 6 necrons + their hero to burn your base.

Another examp: 6 SM+ SM Commander, can get down their hero but dies because 8 necrons warriors still alive shooting they.

I hope you understand what i want to say.
Sorry about my English

[Jow]

Yup. I played a couple games vs. Necrons on Railway last night and one thing's for sure - Necrons are pretty broken on very small maps with lots of chokepoints and low resources. Since Necron can get whatever resources they want in time and don't need map control whatsoever, it leaves the other non-Necron player having to make do with his two requisition spots (on Railway, for example) and it's a tide you just really can't weather.

[Boomstar]

Just make deleted units not have bodies simple and easy weeee.

Oh and I haven't really played online yet but how could flayed ones possibly be a problem there slow as ASS. Has no one here heard of dancing? I mean its like your whole army has FoF when fighting necrons, that you don't have to toggle.

[Jow]

The problem is not having ranged units. If, say, you go for a couple of assault squads early trying to fight off a warrior rush or just make headway into the map and flayed show up, especially a couple of squads, you're forced to engage them because otherwise you'll just be chased around all day. Ultimately, even if you DO have ranged units, you can only run so far.

[Deathscythe61]

The think that Necron Warriors are free... come on people, don't oversimplify! Don't forget how the Necron res system works.

[Kronickle]

Like the tabletop fluff. Necrons are SUPPOSED to awaken ready to fight. They don't need to be created or trained or equipped or fed = Free. One race will always have a stronger T1 than the other 6 or they would all be the same. Just wait till the Tyranids come out then Necron players will probably be complaining.

[InReverie]

IF Tyranids come out, I honestly wouldn't complain much. Getting destroyed by a massive swarm of Dinosaur-looking beasties would be wildly entertaining to watch.

[DukeRustfield]

Yup. I played a couple games vs. Necrons on Railway last night and one thing's for sure - Necrons are pretty broken on very small maps with lots of chokepoints and low resources. Since Necron can get whatever resources they want in time and don't need map control whatsoever, it leaves the other non-Necron player having to make do with his two requisition spots (on Railway, for example) and it's a tide you just really can't weather.
Having infinite resources and 8 cap doesn't help you. You could get 2 squads of NW and that's it. The other player could have 20 cap but less resources. But I agree that tiny maps work for Necron. But tiny maps (Eden, Railway, et al) are not in the automatch rotation.

The huge maps ARE in rotation, however, and on those maps Necrons get crushed. They cannot defend their LP's and end up with the same micro cap and the enemy has full cap and mega resources.


The think that Necron Warriors are free... come on people, don't oversimplify! Don't forget how the Necron res system works.

3 of them at 3 cap are free. If you want to do anything at all you need to reinforce them and that costs power.

[Chad Ghostal]

Any reason why Necron turrets have the same range as my upgrades firewarriors? They have the only turrets which have about the same range as my upgraded fire warriors. Only the patient hunter path will give you greater range. These are non-upgraded Necron turrets which outrange my upgraded fire warriors, only upgraded missile launchers in tier 2 can do it, and it isn't anti-infantry. So why do Necrons get the longest ranged anti-everything turret, in tier one, while others have to get to tier 2 to only get the range and anti-vehicle capabilities of their tier 1 turrets?

[Kronickle]

Because 1 turret has to protect their WHOLE BASE in T1.

[Chad Ghostal]

Strange I have no turrets in Tier 1,2,3,4, I basically have none so I guess i'm worse off than they are.

[Vaelys]

Necrons will get some changes as DC s in its first day and balance s far to be perfect but it will come with time for sure.

So far Necrons seems Overpowered to me compared to the other races, anyone saying they are not s just a pro necron or have to be blind.
Personally when i pick necron i find it easy to win without having to micro a lot or anything, they are resistant, they hit hard, ressources come fast enough without having to control a lot of points, they may be slow but with their shoot on the move they can kill any dancer without much problem, also running away from them s cool but won t make you kill them, so overall they kick ass .

They aren t a "free win" race but it s clear to me they have some advantages compared to others at the moment, hope the balance will get better as i like necrons but feel bad using them atm ;)

[SilentOne]

I guess that you didn't read previous "ZOMG I got OWNED by Cron Player! WTF! IMBAA!". But seriously, from the things that others say, necrons can be easily outmanevroued (not to mention that they're utterly helpless in countering early rush).

[Kratos]

Necrons can kill things? IMBA! NERF NERF NERF!

[Vaelys]

Nope didnt read it , couldnt find it now too.

Easily outmanevroued , well, "maybe" on a large map, but on a 1 vs 1 you can t do much.

Their vulnerabilty to very early rush s their only weakness at the moment, but having to do it to stand a chance sn t what i would call "balanced".

Thanks Kratos you greatly helped in pointing out i was right ;-)

[Ultra Simon]

I 'personally' think to balance flayed ones, is to reduce that ability to teleport back to a building, maybe after deepstriking increase its recharge time (i know its not available from the very second), decrease there strength vs inf by a very small margin, since there speed makes up for it, and the one thing I have noticed is reduce there damage vs buildings. The biggest problem I see with flayed ones is the ability to deepstrike in a base, destroy half of it, and teleport back after some serious damage. Here is a replay proving my point:
Pimpy vs True, on MoM, please tell me if its the right replay, starts of with some nasty scout exploiting, then my come back.
http://rapidshare.de/files/36780346/2P_MEETING_OF_MINDS.2006-10-15.01-14-57.rec.html
Enjoy ^^ Proves every single point possible to think about with crons, imbalance, and stuff. Watch to the end to, cause at the end I delete my army a resorrect. Might mean something. Also, if u want to balance resorrect, maybe slightly reduce the HP u start of with when resorrected.

Cheers
-Ultra Simon :D

[DukeRustfield]

The teleport ability is the only thing that makes big maps not an instant win for every other race. At some point your army needs to leave your base, and if you're a necron, that means 2389 hours later, you're where you want to be. If an enemy attacks in that time, you've lost. The teleport ability is specifically to protect your own ass(ets).

It's pretty obvious looking at the stats when I log in. The 1100 people (like me) are all Necrons. So they are beating the shit out of all the 1000 players who then post about IMBA. But look at the 1200's/1300's and I saw a 1400 today. I have not seen one Necron. Seriously. No shit. Not one. Though I have seen Tau in the 1200's.

I'm always worried about being an IMBA defender, since they suck. But I regularly get smasherized by guys of other races. People just need to learn how Necrons work, and adapt. That's why I kind of chuckle at those "what is your [insert race] build order?" Now that you can see what race/map you are fighting, it should totally depend on the map and enemy. If you do the same thing all the time and expect it to work on every map vs. every race, you're in for a rude awakening.

[Vorlock]

I have to agree with Duke. Necrons seem strong, but they have some severe limitations that are hard to get around.

I think the main problem people are having with necrons is that they try to fight them like they would any other army, and then loose badly. Necrons are a special type of army and need to be fought differently. I bet eldar players, or former eldar players, will absolutely destroy most necron players. Why? Eldars know to move they guys away, stop, shoot, move away, etc. They are used to fighting this way, as opposed to just sending all your guys rushing at the enemy. This small little change to fighting necrons is really all it takes to kill them, because they are slower than every other unit. If people would just back off and shoot, basically a continous fighting retreat, they could beat the necrons easy. But, that is not the ...new player... way. And I think that is why the masses are complaining about necron.

That said, I noticed something today: Flayed ones still do their normal building damage when their moral is broken. This surprised me (and I bet in surprised the enemy who got owned too). I assumed that flayed ones, and all units, do crap damage to buildings just like they do crap damage to units once their morale is broken. So the question is, do ALL units hurt buildings like normal when their moral is broken, or just necrons/flayed ones?

[PastHope]

I think the fundamental problem with the necrons is basically the strategy against them is to "run away" or "not fight them"... in a head to head slug out crons are gonna win just about every time. They are just way too tough and hard to take down especially en masse.

Whether that means they are IMBA or not I havent played enough to say, but there is definitely something fishy with them...

The NL is a beast - hes easily the most powerful primary commander. The whole ressurect where you died thing is pretty lame.

Plus I thought it was a little weird how 1 squad of Flayed ones on overwatch was able to take out a Le Mans Russ tank in Campaign mode.

[baira]

*edit* ok i was wrong with my comment... forget about it :)

[InReverie]

The NLs resurrect where you die is a gift and, at the same time, a curse. If an Ork player decides to box your NL in with Waaagh banners (any base defense weapon chews through the Lord's army like it's wet tissue), you have no NL for the rest of the game. That means no Nightbringer, no Res. Orb. Err...gg

[korgoth]

The NLs resurrect where you die is a gift and, at the same time, a curse. If an Ork player decides to box your NL in with Waaagh banners (any base defense weapon chews through the Lord's army like it's wet tissue), you have no NL for the rest of the game. That means no Nightbringer, no Res. Orb. Err...gg
Yeah except that he can teleport out. Not disagreeing with you, because I feel it's more of a curse. Who wants to have their commander come back right in the middle of the enemies army? No one.

But he can just teleport out no problem...

[LoRd KoRn]

I dont really like how I can command 8 squads and more of Flayed Ones and have no real disadvantage that would stop me spamming them.
They should be special units for bringing terror into the enemy lines with unforseen attacks from behind and so on. They should not really make an army of their own, Warriors should take over the army backbone part.

[DukeRustfield]

But he can just teleport out no problem...
It's a huge problem if there are missile units around. Each knockback prevents you from using abilities. I've gotten out with 50% health before and that's me wasting a minute too.


I dont really like how I can command 8 squads and more of Flayed Ones and have no real disadvantage that would stop me spamming them.
Let's see, the disadvantage is they suck outside of base raping or breaking morale. Warriors ARE the backbone of the army. They scale more powerful than Flayers. And you can't have as your backbone a CC unit that is slower than every unit in the game -- well, unless you only fight stationary targets.

[Kratos]

The Necronlord seems to be bugged sometimes, right after he gets respawned he becomes sometimes invulnerable to all attacks for about 10 seconds, bug or feature?
NOTE: He can still attack, but has no animation while attacking!

[dreddnott]

You think it might be a bug in the Phase Shifter ability?

[Vokkan]

Not only do their turrets have superior range, it goes for their LPs as well. I was fighting a friend on the Hellfire canyon map, where his LPs could fire at my LPs that couldn't do a thing.
So basicly I'm stuck with 2 LPs and couldn't really fit anything usefull (gens, mc) in my safe area.
And I hate that AoE ability that instantly kills 6-7 guardsmen.

I'm so tired of only winning against Necrons because the opponent have no idea of what he's doing.

[DukeRustfield]

The AOE is an LP2 and it is far inferior to every other race's LP2. If you walk up with your CS it will do like no dmg to you before you take it out. It's refire is like every 30 seconds.

[Vorlock]

Just an update on my earlier post: Flayed ones do not do normal damage while morale broken to buildings. Upon closer examination it appears there was a non-broken necron lord in the mass of broken flayed ones attacking the building, and thats what was doing the damage.



Flayed ones are 3 cap. That means the max you can have, barring res orb/tomb spider, is 6 full squads, and then you have nothing else except for a wraith (and vehicles).




On another note, i think PastHope summed it up nicely: The key to fighting necrons is to run away or not fight them head to head. Anyone who fights them head to head looses. Anyone that uses hit and run, or dancing, wins. Until most players figure this out (and start using this tactic), necrons will "seem" overpowered. Its kind of annoying to see so many complaints, though, when the counter to necrons is so easy to do. I think people just dont WANT to fight the enemy like that, and thats whats causing the problems.

[Muse]

You say that you need to 'run away' from them to beat the Necrons...a novel idea, that I myself have been using quite a bit.

But, the problem is...it doesn't work. You run away from those two or three squads of Necron warriors and their hero, and they just walk into your base and tear it apart. Base swapping? You'll never beat the rate at which the Necrons tear apart a base so early in the game. And dancing...how can you dance something that is as accurate moving as it is standing still, and just rapes in ranged combat?

So this 'running away' tactic is hardly valid. And in maps like Into the Breach? Good luck having any chance at all against a Necron player.

Another problem is that, even when you are able to kill their first wave (I did so before with two squads of upgraded banshees and a farseer which came later), I tried attack their base, but their turrets just kept taking out my squads. I mean, the things would be shooting me on the edge of my LOS, thats crazy for a teir 1 turret. Worse yet, I'd blow up one and then another one would come up. All the while getting attaced by Necron troops that are building.

So, eh. I've been looking for alot of different ways to counter the Necrons, but I'm just not finding anything that will actually work.

And Imperial Guard against Necrons? Haha...don't make me laugh. Those poor bastards don't stand a chance. And against the dude who said "use Basalisks." Are you kidding? The Necrons will be in your base ripping it apart way before you even have a vehicle building.

The Necrons are great the way they are. Really, their awesome, but they just don't have enough weaknesses to really make them even in terms of balancing. With a couple tweaks here and there I'm sure they could be put into a better spot without nerfing them to hell.

[Shinova]

You don't run away from Necrons. You run circles around them and hit them where it hurts. They'll likely have CC units up front, and ranged units in the back. Pull back, and around them, and then hit them again. Jumping CC units are great here.

Most people meet them head-on, pull back, and then head-on again, and they wonder why the Necrons are winning so easily. They think there's only forward and back, when in reality there's a left and right and around as well.

Or just outnumber them. Other races can get more units faster, so take advantage of that.

[ChemCommando]

What if you don't have any jumping CC troops and your ranged troops are easily killed by Necron Warriors? You also can't dance because your guns are the same range pretty much as necron guns, I'm talking about IG :(.

[Muse]

You don't run away from Necrons. You run circles around them and hit them where it hurts. They'll likely have CC units up front, and ranged units in the back. Pull back, and around them, and then hit them again. Jumping CC units are great here.

Most people meet them head-on, pull back, and then head-on again, and they wonder why the Necrons are winning so easily. They think there's only forward and back, when in reality there's a left and right and around as well.

Or just outnumber them. Other races can get more units faster, so take advantage of that.
What? No, seriously, what are you talking about? You act like 'flanking' a unit in this game causes more damage or something.

Ok, running around the melee units to attack the ranged units...now what? You have the ranged units in melee with your melee, while the enemie's melee starts hitting your melee in the back. Necron Warrior's melee, while not exactly uber powerful, is hardly bad considering they have a massive knock back. Not to mention they take alot of hits, so there is no way you're melee unit is going to kill them before the Flayers get in range of your melee unit.

And then what? You either have your melee unit get raped, or have them retreat. Then, while you do this, any damage you caused to the warriors has a nice chance of just being undone.

Not only this, but what about armies that don't have fast units or jump troops? What are they supposed to do?

But that wasn't even the point I was trying to make. The point I'm trying to make is that, not only do warriors rape in ranged combat, and have decent enough melee to fend for themselves, they also do huge amounts of damage to buildings, all this for a unit you can get for free in the beginning of the game. I'm sorry, but something is just a little off here.

As I already stated, Necrons really aren't that unbalanced, they just have alot of small unbalances that, together, lead to one larger problem. Just tweaking a couple things, such as Warrior damage vs. buildlings, would more than likely help balance Necrons out.

[Shinova]

What if you don't have any jumping CC troops and your ranged troops are easily killed by Necron Warriors? You also can't dance because your guns are the same range pretty much as necron guns, I'm talking about IG :(.

I've heard differently from other IG players. Once you hit weapon specialization and the other guardsmen upgrades, and put plasma on all of them, their damage starts going waaay up and dropping Necron squads becomes frequent.

Also the Hellhounds work great with their new ability since Necrons can't get out of the way fast enough. And use Commissar's execute ability.

Lastly, you'll always have more Guardsmen squads than they have infantry, so you can use a couple to draw fire while everyone else pours the damage.


Ok, running around the melee units to attack the ranged units...now what? You have the ranged units in melee with your melee, while the enemie's melee starts hitting your melee in the back.

....... Are you feeling okay today?


Necron Warrior's melee, while not exactly uber powerful, is hardly bad considering they have a massive knock back. Not to mention they take alot of hits, so there is no way you're melee unit is going to kill them before the Flayers get in range of your melee unit.

Yes, because Flayed Ones zip across the battlefield to reach my melee units CCing their ranged.... oh wait, they won't. My ranged will be pouring the fire on them whilst they shuffle their way over to the warrior squads to help. And when they do, I'll just switch the order again. Their warriors can gun on the run, but are too slow to catch up, especially if one were play Eldar.


Not only this, but what about armies that don't have fast units or jump troops? What are they supposed to do?

You mean like IG? Who, with weapon specialization, can overwhelm Necron squads with sheer firepower and numbers through plasma guardsmen and hellhounds? Or Space Marines, who can spam plasma tacs and sic Dreads on the Flayed Ones? Or Chaos with their zerkers and infiltrated plasma tacs? Or Tau, with Kroot mass plus Firewarriors (and Krootoxes later in the game)?

[ChemCommando]

I've heard differently from other IG players. Once you hit weapon specialization and the other guardsmen upgrades, and put plasma on all of them, their damage starts going waaay up and dropping Necron squads becomes frequent.

Also the Hellhounds work great with their new ability since Necrons can't get out of the way fast enough. And use Commissar's execute ability.


Um, yes thats all fine and good IN TIER 2, but what about tier 1 where you don't have hellhounds, or weapon specialization, the execution ability OR plasma? The same tier 1 where the necrons can easily attack your base and ravage it? I agree that IF you can manage to survive to tier 2 it gets better, but thats not the problem.

[Stargorger]

Guys! yikes.

Muse, go on to the "Vespid build too fast" thread if you want some easy ideas to counter the Necrons. Maybe the IG get slaughtered by them, but that's what the IG are made for. The guys are just fodder. Get some tanks out there.

Geez

[Muse]

Guys! yikes.

Muse, go on to the "Vespid build too fast" thread if you want some easy ideas to counter the Necrons. Maybe the IG get slaughtered by them, but that's what the IG are made for. The guys are just fodder. Get some tanks out there.

Geez
Yes, lets completely nullify certain armies, and use imbalances in other armies as our only way to defeat something. Great idea.

If Relic went by that mentality, then the only race in this game would be Chaos and Space Marine.

Anyway, seeing as how my main point as been ignored twice in a row now, I'm not going to bother typing out another post. I'll just leave it at that Necron need a few small fixes here an there to help balance out some of their units, which is to be completely expected with any new race.

[Stargorger]

I'm not saying nullify the army. Im saying use it he way it was made: with the flesh as the shielf and the steel as the backbone, not the other way around.

And if Relic went by THAT mentality, they would be... gasp exactly where they are!

Necrons are MADE to be a giant steamroller. So find a way to stop them before they get going. Vespid Rush, CL and cultists, banshees, Hellhound guarded my guardsmen, FC and two scout squads, etc...

[Carl]

I'm not saying nullify the army. Im saying use it he way it was made: with the flesh as the shielf and the steel as the backbone, not the other way around.

I think people actually need to stop and read what Muse was saying.


Weather Necrons really are IMBA or not i'll decide when i get the game.

What Muse is having trouble with is Necrons in T1. Once he gets vehicles he does great, but he just can't survive the inital warrior rush. Thus he never gets vehicles.

Peice of advice, Necorn Warrior Guns only have 20 Range before the First upgrade. Thus, evryone else basic guns outrange them. As soon as the warriors start shooting, point em in the opposite direction, run out of range of the warriors and stop and let them come back into range again.

IG with GL's and Lasguns, (longest range of the lot), will do quite well too at this. CSM get H.Bolters in T1.

For refrance, a Necron Warrior (including the average effects of ressurection) has approx 600Hp's of Inf_Heavy Med_Armour. Their guns do a basic 12DPS to every target type out there. So don't build Commanders against Warrior rushes, the warriors are too good against them.

Warrior WILL beat ANY T1 infantry unit 1 warrior on 1 enemy unit. But get them 2 or 3 to one and you can win by quite a margin.

[DeadlyFred]

1) Necron Warriors take a LONG time to train from a 'Lith, far longer than any other basic infantry, and probably longer than most more advanced infantry. They also take more pop cap.

2) Necrons have only one "resource" and building their power cores also takes a heck of alot longer than any other faction's. They also do not benefit from resource injections by capping points, as other races do.

3) All their foot troops are really, REALLY slow and their only capping unit is totally defenseless. Every other race has a distinct advantage in that fact during the early game since they will be able to cap points and at least put up a fight against any roaming enemies while Necrons are stuck with pondersome footsoliders and defenseless scarabs until they start to tech up.

The issues with Flayed ones and cheating the pop cap through deletion are certainly things to look into but I think for the most part they are a pretty well-balanced race from what I've played so far.

[Justin Xiang]

I had 4 squads of faly ones surround 3 of my fire warrior squads on Blood alley and it was a cake walk for the tau when i sent them on a five second run away...their rifles jsut ate the flayed ones...then i send in the 'ape' riders and its gg necrons. Tau dont NEED turrets when you count their range and have a spotter squad. the key to beating necs is staggerd squad formations 'conga' like style. Retreat one fire warrior group while the other two slap the flayed ones dead (again). The one thing that is a pain being tau is waiting to get those Krootox riders. I can't believe how mean those apes are to ANYTHING.

[Stargorger]

Yo Carl, i was listening to what he was saying. The post of mine you quote had NOTHING to do with the original issue. I was repsonding to something else he'd said and if YOU had read his posts you would have seen that.

And I thought the original question was whether they were balanced early on? The question stands: if you're complaining about them being too powerful with their lord, use the strategies provided by all those players on the oher side of the line who say Necrons are too weak. If you're complaining about them being weak, use the suggestions provided here.

[MrBims]

2) Necrons have only one "resource" and building their power cores also takes a heck of alot longer than any other faction's. They also do not benefit from resource injections by capping points, as other races do.

3) All their foot troops are really, REALLY slow and their only capping unit is totally defenseless. Every other race has a distinct advantage in that fact during the early game since they will be able to cap points and at least put up a fight against any roaming enemies while Necrons are stuck with pondersome footsoliders and defenseless scarabs until they start to tech up.

These would be good points... if Necrons actually had to have map control. Necrons are the only race in the game that completely circumvent the resource system that originally made DoW so innovative: instead of just building structures to get resources, you had to expand and capture points. Necrons are a step backwards: controlling 15 points points allows you no more advantage than if you only had 5 points.

Necrons not 'benefiting' from capping points is their greatest advantage over every other race. They can sit inside their base and build generators while teching up, and forcing the enemy to fight on the Necron's terms. Against a decent Necron player you're not going to see Warriors come out until he has atleast 2 fully reinforced squads and a Lord, where he will have an advantage over every other attacking force at that point of the game because every other player has for the first 4 minutes of the match focused on capping, LP'ing points, and starting tier 2, not building an army specifically designed to kill Warriors. The Necrons are not only better at turtling than Imperial Guard, but they get a much quicker and potent return off it.

[Jenga]

Hey, I just found out Curse of the Machine Spirit works against a restored monolith...pretty nifty.

[Sniper]

Necrons do need to cap points, otherwise their production is too slow.

[baira]

Necrons do need to cap points, otherwise their production is too slow.



Well this and:

Vicktory Countdown 00:30 seconds

[VoydAngel]

I agree that deleted necron usits should have no bodies and therefor cant be rez'd.

I agree that NL and TS should respawn from base and not have persistant body location.

However, I think that Flayed ones are fine the way they are.

My opinion: make capping points more neccessary for necron. Maybe even make it so that the number of points you have capped directly affects how far over your cap rezing allows you to go. IE: you must have at least 6 capped points to go to "23" via rez'ing. Each additional point capped adds 3 to that limit, so that in order to actually get to "35" via rez, you must have at least 10 points capped.
(5 points = "20" + (5 more points x 3 cap= "15") = "35"

anyway, just my 2cents

[DukeRustfield]

Capping points is amazingly necessary for Necrons. Those who say otherwise have never played them and don't understand them.

[baira]

As persistent Lord/Tomb spider corpses are

really folks those persistent corpses are *YOUR WEAPON AGAINST NECS*
you can take those units out of the entire game thanks to persistent corpses and without lord/Tombis Necrons loose about 80% of their power

[Vaelys]

Basically from what people say to kill nec you have to :

-make them run after you while you dance and kill them
-camp their lord and tomb spyders with turrets or whatever to immobilize them

Theses aren t real solution to me, the first one if just about being more skilled than the nec player, and the second s just being obliged to spend ressources on turrets etc cause if you don t immobilize this unit you are in deep sh*t.

I never said necrons were IMBA but as a lot of people pointed it out already they need some changes to make them even with other races, at the moment necrons don't need to push hard on map control, just need to spam some units , attacks and that s about it, while the opposing player have to do a lot of micro to compete, not really balanced to me...

I didn t spoke about really early rush as not only nec but anyone who get rushed in the first 2 mins will have a hard time if he didn t expect it =p

[CorsairX]

you all just talk and do nothing more just talk and speculate
SHOW ME A REPLAY WHERE NECRONS ARE OWNING and i will show you the errors you have made

necrons have VERY weak units in my opinion and you need to be using them right to do anything
in example the harder necron ai can do crap against SM
i played SM becouse i can beat necrons easy and some people said that they have serious problems with killing eaven necrons ai with them so i played and totally owned necrons

as far as i see plasma totally screws necrons, scouts kill there morale which makes it easier to kill them, assault marines kill their economy easy becouse they need those spiders to cap and they die easy, 1 speeder can eat them up



in the end they had like -340 military points where i had over 2000
and IM NOT A SM PLAYER and many good sm players will se how lame my playstyle was i play ORK and recently tau/necron :)
rep:
http://dbd.republika.pl/SM_owning_necronAI_harder.rar

i know that a good necron player is a lot better then AI but still, sm is not my race and i can own necron THAT easy?

besides the necron ressurecting himself when rebuilt in the same location is a curse to him i just had GK with other squads around him and he dies as soon as he awakens

furthermore turrets are soo cheap now they are good defenses if you plant them well, and orbital strike which is triggered a lot faster = dead gens

[MrBims]

Capping points is amazingly necessary for Necrons. Those who say otherwise have never played them and don't understand them.

Necrons gain zero advantage from more than 5 points, and don't need more than 2 or 3 points to be a threat. Amazingly, almost every map in the game starts each player off with 2 or 3 points in their base. Woah, I must be on to something here...


Vicktory Countdown 00:30 seconds

Wraiths decap.

[korgoth]

Necrons gain zero advantage from more than 5 points, and don't need more than 2 or 3 points to be a threat. Amazingly, almost every map in the game starts each player off with 2 or 3 points in their base. Woah, I must be on to something here...



Wraiths decap.
Yeah, strategic takeover of the map points making the Victory timer in your favor and denying the enemy more resources is zero advantage.

And yes, they do need that 100% and cannot make do with "2 or 3" points in late game as you suggest. I'm not sure if you've played Necrons much but their stuff builds really, really slowly and their research goes very slow without all the cap points. Necron are severely crippled late game with "2 or 3" caps.

[CorsairX]

not everyone plays capture games

[MrBims]

Yeah, strategic takeover of the map points making the Victory timer in your favor and denying the enemy more resources is zero advantage.

You make it sound as though that's the only way to win. Necrons may not get map control, but they don't need to. The insane building damage of spammed Warriors and Flayed Ones make Annihilation victories possible without ever going into tier 3. And how many maps played in multiplayer really have enough points to make denying them to enemies effective?


And yes, they do need that 100% and cannot make do with "2 or 3" points in late game as you suggest. I'm not sure if you've played Necrons much but their stuff builds really, really slowly and their research goes very slow without all the cap points. Necron are severely crippled late game with "2 or 3" caps.

Ofcourse they don't make do with 3 points in the late game. But it's more than enough to statiate their warrior production early game, and they need only five points to get 100%. That's usually just two points outside their initial base, which they can easily manage once they've built up their economy.

[dextra]

i think the resurrection of the necrons needs a serious nerf and please, dont let it go beyond max cap.

ive even had the baneblad, the strongest unit the IG has to offer but with his neverending resurrections of NL and the tomb spiders he just nuked me down, slowly, but it was enough...this is rediculous.
and when the NL dies he really should not appear where he died, thats some serious base harassment.

[nwinter]

I am having major trouble dealing with Wraiths as Eldar, I dunno about any other races. Two Wraiths can tear through a unit of CoW Banshees without trouble it seems, and I can't even get away with FoF. A squad of Warriors, Lord and 3 Wraiths can easily take out my 2 Guardians, 2 Cow Shees, FC and Rangers with few losses.

[Linkin217]

i've been rushed by orks and eldar as necrons and have held them off really nice like though i have wanted to quit becase it seemed too tough but i ended up winning.
the gauss rock

[The_sleeper1]

necrons are very rushable, just make tacs drop a gen and armory and then use flamers and pwn them and dont let them get out of T1.

Broken morale = 80-90% damage drop and you can break them real fast with 2-3 squads with 2 flamers each.

[McGilles]

I see much people complain about the strenght of the NL in the very beginning.

He's easy to kill with for example the FC of the CL, just attack them to a squad and youll win easily caus they cant target you specifically and you can :)

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Wraiths are just nasty. Need to focus fire and NOT let them get sync kills off.

[MrBims]

I see much people complain about the strenght of the NL in the very beginning.

He's easy to kill with for example the FC of the CL, just attack them to a squad and youll win easily caus they cant target you specifically and you can :)

Heh, yeah. And also Force Commanders can teleport and Necron Lords can't. Oh wait...


Not only do NLs have the ability to teleport, it has a longer range than the Big Mek's and I'm pretty sure he can do it twice before having to recharge. If a Necron Lord dies anytime in tier 1 it's because the player can't micro at all.

[DukeRustfield]

NL are really hard to kill. But the port can be mistimed and takes a second or you get knocked back. But in T1, yeah, hard to die.

[nichtganz]

The real problem with the necron lord is that he after turning into the Night Bringer can teleport out. I think they should make it so that he is stunned when he transforms back for let's say 15 seconds. Thus giving you enough time to kill him.

[DukeRustfield]

Yeah! And when Big Mek teleports like their HQ should explode. And when Farseer activates Mind War her own head should fall off, cuz that would be cool. I mean, using ultimate powers should be a penalty.

Necrons have one hero and it's the NL. All his powers work with the army. When he's transformed he's not doing that. But making you research an ultimate power that was essentially a suicide mission for your hero, who then stayed where he died would pretty much mean no one ever used it.

[nichtganz]

you really arnt good at comparing things, there is quite a diffrence for an Uber respawning Commander who for free can transofrm in their base back to the Night Bringer, its very annoying the fact that if he dies in there your gonna have to deal with it unless he telies out in which case he will telie back in and NB himself and a commander such as the big mek. Truely a P.O.S strat just like the [1.41] IG Grenade rush.

[InReverie]

Just keep in mind that every other race has some sort of Secondary Commander. Crons don't, so their only commander is given many abilities and high HP to make up for it.

[CorsairX]

what about destroyer lord? he is a secondary commander for necrons and can throw stasis fields and posses vehs
and i belive there can be two of those :)

i think the NL is ok personally

[DukeRustfield]

They call Destroyer Lords commanders but I don't think they are all that. They do pretty crap dmg, have very low health for when they come out and when they possess a vehicle (which takes like 10 seconds or something huge and they are usually killed trying), they cease to exist. So unless the other vehicle is REALLY powerful you were probably better off just shooting it with a heavy destroyer.

And the stasis field AE is really small. I only got good use out of it when I stasis'd a Bloodthirster.

Only good times possession worked for me was taking over a fire prism once and a Leman once. I've taken over Skyshark's or whatever and realized I just possessed an inferior vehicle :p.

[Niemivh666]

I would like to see another squad of Ogryns for the IG aswell.

[Quex13]

Heh, first post.


Just keep in mind thta every other race has some sort of Secondary Commander. Crons don't, so their only commander is given many abilities and high HP to make up for it.

What do you call the Destroyer Lord?

On the whole topic, yeah I agree Crons need some changes.

1. Make Lord and TS respawn at base after first recruiting.

This makes sense. I was crippled one game when I was double-teamed by two Necrons. I had two Lords in my base and about three Warrior squads. I was playing Tau and managed to fend them off. However, the two Lords were dead in my base. Every once in a while, the Lords would rez in my base. So, this being in Tier 1, I never had the firepower to keep them dead, and I couldn't expand enough because I had to defend my own base. My two allies were promptly annihilated, and I suddenly had 12 Warrior squads on my doorstep with two Kroot, two Firewarrior squads, and my Commander. The Tau lack any turrets to keep him in check, and LP won't cut it. For some races, this isn't a problem. But, for the Tau, it is.

2. When you delete Necrons, the bodies disappear

This one just makes sense, as it is simply an exploit. The Rez Orb is meant to bring you above the cap, but 35 is a little extreme. I can see capping it at 26, so you can get two extra squads. Still, this is simply an exploit, and not a strat.

3. Gauss Turrets have decreased range

This also makes sense, as turrets are meant to help, not prevent everything. Some Necron players might say, "Wait, we can't farm power anymore! They just rush us and we can't do anything! IMBA!!!!1" Well, live with it.

Other than this, I think Necrons are fine just the way they are. What happens if you nerf Flayed? Necron players start complaining because they have no answer to teleporting/jumping/random deep-strike counter.

Necrons are meant to be a steamroller. And sometimes it is hard to prevent it. Everything needs a little balancing, Krootox need to be either capped or made weaker, honestly. And that's coming from a Tau player!

So, some races need some balanced. What RTS is perfectly balanced (other than Starcraft, because that has been out forever)?

Oh well. It's still a great game, and it just needs a tad bit of balancing. Otherwise, it's perfect.

EDIT: Yeah, made the comment on the Destroyer Lord before the other people posted. Oh well, I had to go in the middle of typing this...

[Vokkan]

Yes! I'm just so happy finding another thing about Necrons that's just is a big F U in the face...

So I was playing IG vs Necrons at Valley of Khorne (wahay). I just managed to drive their first attack off by pulling out 3 squads of Guardsmen with GL, taking down the NLs before they reached me and with some dancing and lots of lasguns I chased away their NL.
Now I just reached T2 and put up two turrets aiding the 3 LPs defending my entrance, while aiming for MC.
Then he sends a couple of wraiths into my solid defence, phasing them out while my turrets and LP2s are wasting thier damage on invincible enemies.
Left are my initial Guardsmen to fight of the enemy, because the attack button on the stationary defence do jack.

Now I wonder, can wraiths decap points while faced out too? Are they hardcapped? Cuz having invincible detectors on the field really stinks, especially in numbers.

[dreddnott]

The Wraiths are buildable at Tier 1.5 (Summoning Core), cost 60 power and are very fragile. The "Phase Out" ability comes at Tier 2 (Awakened Monolith). It only lasts for a few seconds, and then they can't use it for a while afterwards (it's on a timer). Once they phase back in they'll either have to retreat or die really quick.

They are not hardcapped (they do use 2 cap apiece). I've never tried to decap a strategic point with a phased-out Wraith...wouldn't matter because the ability definitely doesn't last as long as it takes to decap.

Using them to distract turrets is a smart strategy I've been advocating since Day 1. It works better against the AI than players, as against an observant player you can only exploit it with some building defences.

[Vokkan]

Thank the emperor that their phase out ability isn't permanent. Still those got spammed under the game I just played. I could count 8 of them at one point, sucking up fire and sync-killing my guardsmen.

At least I realised that 3 Guardsmen w/ GLs are as solid as it gets against Necron.

[Shinova]

Necron Lord is only hard to kill if he's backed up by a bunch of troops. One can easily kill a NL with two tier 1 infantry squads, like tac marines or firewarriors.

If he has troops with him, you should have enough to outnumber his.

That's one of the best ways to deal with Necrons: just outnumber them.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

If you have an NL in your base just keep some kroot there.

[Shinova]

Indeed. Kroot are incredibly amazing against everything that is infantry. Dirt cheap too.

[InReverie]

Tau really are the new race to look out for. Necrons can be pretty sneaky sometimes and are monstrous late game, but the Tau are what you really have to look out for. Kroot are basically like cheap FWs for CC, Krootoxes are ridiculous unless heavily outnumbered, the Knarloc tears through infantry faster than any other God unit, despite its relative fragility. Add a squad or two of Broadsides, load em in a stealth transport and dump them in an enemy base, and voila - gg

[a_Necron_Lord01]

To answer the question about Wraiths decapping points while phased, the answer is: yes they can decap points while phased.

They seem to decap points very fast, it seems anyway. It seems like they decap 2x as fast as scarabs, though it could be my imagination.

For me the phase shift seems to last just about as long as it takes to decap a point.

Before any further cries of "Necrons are IMBA!!1111" go out, they also have slightly more hit points than a gretchin and armor a little thicker than tissue.

As for the rest of the anti-Necron whining...

Necrons were a really cool race that worked differently and were actually unique and interesting, however more players are SM, Chaos, Ork, Eldar, IG and Tau fanboys who don't want to actually have to use a different strategy against Necrons than they would use against everyone else, so they will be nerfed into oblivion just to make them happy.

It's ok to have uber Harlequins owning the Primary commanders of every race.(Eldar)

It's ok to have an invisible army.(Chaos)

It's ok to have a flying unit that builds in .5 seconds and pretty much auto destroys buildings.(Tau)

It's ok to have hundreds and hundreds of troops.(IG and Orks)

It's ok to get nerfed really hard through DC and *still* be very powerful.(SM)

It's not ok to be on even footing with the above listed, nor are you allowed to be a unique or interesting race.

The game seemed balanced to me. There are no reports of Necrons owning everyone and everything in sight, except from the same handful of people who cry IMBA the loudest and most often.

[Reaper187]

nerf bat! need i say more necrons are really the new sm...they can deepstrike almost everything and teleport their whole army away? Nightbringer is immune for how may seconds? 2 warriors squads can kill anything and a hq? Hey guys we don't need the temie spam anymore...we have the flayed one, night bringers, uber warriors and guess what when we are going to lose lets just teleport away and do it again.....and look at those poor dummies....when their sp decay we don't have to worry? we only need out power gens sp when they decay will not affect our production one bit....relic really needs to nerf them......lbtw ig guardmen should reinforce for free in tier 3 with 3 secs per each.....dieing guardsmen will break your eco worse that anyone elst and they take too long to reinforce since they don't scale as well as others.

[CorsairX]

Quex13
and what else? make all t1,t2,t3,t4 units in all armies have same hp/cos/damage/pop ? will this be balance to you? i`m sure you would be happy about this

those changes you propose would take all the fun of fighting/playing necrons
you cannot adapt to necron race? then do not play

i played vs necron insane ai on meeting of the minds, lost 700 orks but kiled 300necrons and win, this is how its suposed to be

same game but played as sm and owned them

necrons give me that warm fuzzy feeling when i paly against them

when yo see massive dead bodies, lay minefields there :) and where necron lord dies, and a turret or two, the necron player will be quite annoyed :D but he has to cope with that too

on the subject of wraith -> they take most of the pop cap, so if you see a lot of them that means the necron player has almost nil ranged troops

and furthermore how would the necron player feel about earthshaking his generator into oblivion?

the only problem i think we have with necrons now is flayed ones morale damage, nerf it a little and the necrons are fine i think

about the destroyer lord
stasis field on a vehicle -> posses -> be happy

[korgoth]

One thing about the wraiths, they can only DECAP.. they can't cap.

[CorsairX]

necrons only capper is the builder scarab which is the worse capper in the game
easy to kill, slow building, slow reinforcing, no weapons, no abilities

[dreddnott]

If they weren't free and/or didn't reveal infiltrated units up to sight range, I'd complain bitterly.

[Shinova]

They also seem to be the slowest cappers. I've always felt that stuff like scouts and stealth teams cap so much faster than they can.

[Quex13]

CorsairX, I think you're overreacting a little. All of the things I mentioned weren't that big of a deal. Necrons deleting units? Is that what the race is meant to be? No! The Necron Lord thing is crippling to anybody that doesn't have turrets. Okay, so we put a Kroot squad or two on the Lord. Now it is 16 pop of infantry vs. 35 pop of Necrons that used exploits! Is that balanced? The gauss turret thing might not be needed to fully balance, but the first two things do.

On a side note, Krootox do need to be capped. I found the Knarloc to be too weak to do anything. Sure it distracted the enemy, but by the time you can get it the enemy can easily destroy it. I have a feeling the Tau are like the old SM, no uber unit, but everything as a whole flows together. The other races are fine the way they are.

The Wraiths are okay as they are. If they couldn't decap, the Necrons would have no way to quickly stop a timer. However, the Phase ability should not apply to decapping. Kinda like how infiltrated units become visible when decapping.

[DeadlyFred]

A (reasonable and uncircumventable) hardcap for Flayed ones would be a good idea.

The persistence thing is vastly annoying, both playing as and against Necrons. As annoying as it is to have a Necron Lord spawn up in the middle of your base, its equally annoying TO have your Necron Lord spawn up in the middle of an enemy base, nuff said. I can appreciate the nod to fluff on the matter but in gameplay terms, it is definitely more trouble than it's worth.

The mass override of the squad cap needs to stop as well, its fine if they can get a certain number over the top, but 20 to 35 is a pretty huge jump. It's also a detriment to the Necron player since you're totally unable to build anything you can't spawn while over the base cap.

I'm thinking perhaps measures which would physically increase the infantry cap above 20 might work out better, and also serve to TRULY hardcap it at that given number(that's not 35).

Mass revival should definitely have a cap as to how many max bodies it would ressurect. "Mass" should not mean "Your entire army that just died right outside the enemy base."

Deleting units should remove them from the game, entirely. That goes for any unit of any race since I'm pretty sure Kroot Carnivores would be just as happy munching on delete Firewarriors to up their HP (if you'd want to do that in the first place, its still taking advantage of the system either way).

[CorsairX]

its a good thing it makes necrons are less like the other races
if you dont like it dont play necron and adapt if you play against them

the delete thing need to be looked at
and the morale damage of flayed ones needs a little nerf just a little and a longer ready time for another ds from monolith

i dont see any other problems other then personal rants and inability to adapt to something new in the game

[Uniema]

I agree, with you-

But I honestly dont play that many necrons...

The Necrons I do play end up getting raped becuase of thier slow movement and build time...

HERES A HINT FOR ALL NON-NECRON PLAYERS...

be aggresive?

[CptStrombosis]

The way the NL spawns is fine. It's a double edged sword which helps make them more unique.

The flayed ones could use a little tweaking, however not too much. MAYBE a hardcap (MAYBE!). More probably a morale damage nerf.

The overpop needs looked at. Maybe 28-30 popcap being max.

The turret is fine, I don't understand what's so difficult about destroying it.

I'm not too sure about the LP's. I havn't had much trouble with them, though I normally don't take on any LP's without the correct unit for the job...

The Wraiths are just fine. 60 power for something that almost instantly dissintigrates under any real fire. It has a timed invulnerability that isn't much of a problem.

It seems much of the trouble people are having is Tier 1 and on small maps. I can understand that it would be hard to fight them, but once you get to tier 2-3 you should start getting some better skills to cope with the Warriors. I might suggest coming at the Necrons from different sides. Don't bunch your units up. Also make sure to fall back to max range whenever they come around and always run from Flayed ones (then turn and put the hurt on them). You just have to use mobility to your advantage.

[lessthanjeff]

I don't have much of a problem with necron warriors but flayed ones continue to wreck shop on me. When I was using the Tau I would usually start with Kroot and you can't close combat the flayed ones unless you're immune to morale. The fire warriors just couldn't handle the flayed ones when they were outnumbered by them. If you have an engagement going on, the flayed ones aren't very expensive and get to the battle unnaturally quickly while most other reinforcements take a long time to join the fray leaving you stranded and outnumbered most of the time.

[Quex13]

The NL spawn is a double-edged sword, but I would prefer it not be there. I consider it more of an annoyance than a individuality thing. Look, if I could just make one change that would be it. It just seems to be killer. What if a Necron Lord spawned and had Essence of the Nightbringer? Instant death. What other race has the power to do that? None. Orbital Bombardment is powerful, but not that much. Some Necron players don't even like it! Aganist races with turrets it isn't a problem, but for the Tau, who lack turrets, it is just plain OP. That is it! It can cripple you early game, which is when all other races are supposed to be better than Necrons. Why can't other people accept it? Oh well, I'm not going to get whiny. I'm just saying that this is important. If I had my wishes, I would put a cap on Krootox. How many people want to nerf their own race? Just consider that when you think that I think that Necrons are IMBA because I can't deal with it.

Gah, that came out very whiny. Just put a cap on total pop, like 25-30, and take out that special spawning. That's all.

[dreddnott]

Essence of the Nightbringer doesn't do very much damage. What can it kill, a plasma generator and/or a listening post? I'm surprised if it can do much more. It's much more effective at psychological warfare.

A hardcap of 3 on the Krootox wouldn't bother me...that's the tabletop limit as they are a Heavy Support choice. They also suck a lot more on the tabletop.

[Quex13]

Correction: I actually play Tau TT, and Krootox are NOT Heavy Support. They're a part of Kroot squads, and the cap on them in Kroot squads are three. So, if you maxed out Krootox in every squad, you could get 15 Krootox. However, they aren't good in TT because they can't infiltrate (yep, Kroot in TT infiltrate. Now if only they brought that to DC...), but they do have good guns and are S5 (which isn't that bad, for the unknowing), and are rather expensive...

[DeadlyFred]

"If you don't like it, don't use it, bla bla bla."

^-- Totally irrelevant statment on a balance forum.

The fact is that it can be annoyance for BOTH sides and, while unique, really serves very little purpose in the gameplay itself. The Lord can teleport and get back quickly to wherever he was if he needs to, and he at least moves faster than Warriors.

The fact that its "unique" is hardly a viable reason to justify its continued existence. If that were the case, the fact that the Lord can ressurect and entire army in one fell swoop is also pretty "unique", should we go ahead and keep that too?

[CptStrombosis]

The fact that its "unique" is hardly a viable reason to justify its continued existence. If that were the case, the fact that the Lord can ressurect and entire army in one fell swoop is also pretty "unique", should we go ahead and keep that too?

Uh, yes...?

Of course you keep the rez in there. It's a great part of the Necrons. It's just a little bit out of whack because it's 35 pop. It doesn't need to be 35 pop. As it wont get that high in 1v1's-2v2's. It just needs toned down a bit for team games (28-30 pop).

The way the NL respawns is a very nice add on in my opinion. I like it. Sure it CAN be annoying, but it's also an opportunity. It requires the Necron player to use strategy in how he uses his lord. Because of how powerful the lord becomes towards the end. I think it's only fair he have both a glaring weakness and advantage rolled into one. If you don't want him stuck in an enemy base, don't send him there... There are other uses for the commander that are far less dangerous and still effective.

[DeadlyFred]

So we should say that, for the ONLY hero the Necrons have, don't sent him into a contested area or you're going to have to worry about having him stuck there? Whereas any other faction can rush their (multiple heros) headlong into any battle and never have to worry about being able to make more of them. We're going to handicap the Necrons and cause an unwarranted disruption to other factions over dealing with a wayward Lord trapped behind enemy lines. We're going to do this because, "it's unique".

Zero sense, sorry.

[XShrike]

Something has to be done about the porting the NL into a base to DS FOs. Doesn't matter if they live the first time because he will keep DS FOs. You actually want everything to die so the NL can res where he died and res all the FOs that dies on the first assault. You can't leave your base because the NL will keep doing this over and over.

Put a hard cap on FOs, this works for res too. Put a time on the Necron bodies. Give the NL just enough health to try to run/teleport, so the Necron play can get him back but, not give another around of the DS. Finally make it so the only ability the NL can use for say 2 minutes is teleport. He just res he should get out of there not res the whole army you wiped out plus what is coming it.

This would stop that damn cheep tactic.

[DeadlyFred]

Giving him less health is a horrible idea, then people will just camp your Lord (even if he dies nowhere NEAR a base) with turrets or something else and kill him every time he comes back to life. You'd literally end up having to stage an "extraction" in order to get your sole hero back and, for Necrons who have a hard enough time getting around, this would be totally bad.

If they had more than one hero, or any other sorts of independent units at all this might not be as big an issue. Since they don't, and since they Lord is NOT just a "support" unit whom should never be exposed to danger and the threat of death, I think this bit of uniqueness ends up being a major design flaw.

[dreddnott]

How long have you been playing Tau, Quex13? You're reading out of the new Tau Empire codex, which changed a lot about the Tau army list, especially how it's organised. What I said is definitely true of "Classic Tau".

[CptStrombosis]

Zero sense, sorry.

It only makes Zero sense if the NL couldn't teleport. Because he can, it makes perfect sense. Anywhere on the map besides someones base it is fairly easy for him to simply pop up and teleport away to safety. Use him intelligently. At this point your posts are just coming across as whiney rants. Recompose your arguements without the sarcasm so they look a bit more coherant.

[DeadlyFred]

Kindly don't patronize me.

I'm still waiting to hear a reason beyond unique "charm" which makes NL body persistence worthwhile. There seems to be at least a few reasons against it and none for it thus far. I'm plenty open to a counter-argument which consists of something more than "That's how it is, it's cool, if you don't like it don't play Necrons."

[lessthanjeff]

The new codex is what allows 3 krootox per kroot squad so yeah you could have 15 now if you really wanted but I don't know about the old one, and isn't that what you would compare hard caps to?

I don't find the Necron Lord reviving wherever he dies too much of a problem for anyone but Tau. I hate having to keep a force back to try to take care of him, no dead unit should put you on the defensive and yet they have it and the scarabs. Without turrets the Tau have some problems but for the other races it's not too bad and I think it adds an interesting level to the game of taking advantage of it, whether you're using or against the Necron.

Also, isn't one of the skimmer bodies described as a lord?

[VoydAngel]

I know I already posted once, but I have played quite a few more games vs. (and as) Necron since my last post and feel the need to reiterate some of my points, and change my opinion on a few others, so here goes.


I agree that deleted necron usits should have no bodies and therefore cant be rez'd.I still Agree.


I agree that NL and TS should respawn from base and not have persistant body location.
I still mostly agree, but this is now kinda up in the air. The ability to camp on these bodies is pretty powerful, however it relegates units or resources to become static, which is horrible. Id still have to say that the bodies should NOT persist, but I can see now the other side of the coin, even if I dont completely agree with it.


However, I think that Flayed ones are fine the way they are.I changed my mind. Flayed Ones are a little tweaky. I wont go so far as to say they are imba, however, there is a problem with them. They can be "rushed" in tier 2. I know a tier 2 rush is a little odd, but when a person drops 3 squads on your base, and ignores all defences and attacks your buildings only, they can take you out of the game pretty quick like. I dont really think we need to hard cap them or raise their cost. IMHO: Realistically, pretty much everything about them is fine save for one thing: they need to have their damage vs. all buildings reduced by 50%, or maybe even 66% (worst case scenario would be 75% but wow, that would suck).

Rez orbing isnt really all that bad if you plan for it, but I still think that they should make necrons need to cap points past 5. Im not saying they dont need to cap points now, or that they are heavily dependant on it now. Im just saying that they need to be slightly more dependand on capping more points than they are currently.


One other idea would be to make it so that a unit/squad can only ever be rez'd ONCE - 1 time. That wont help the 1st time a NL rez's a whole army mind you, but it sure would make it alot harder to "spam" the ability. At the very least he would have to spend a decent amount of time rebuilding the army from his monolith cause all the corpses are gone once they die that 2nd time. Even if he were to do half armies, so he could do them twice as often, it still works perfect cause then youre only dealing with half-armies. =)

[CptStrombosis]

I'm still waiting to hear a reason beyond unique "charm" which makes NL body persistence worthwhile. There seems to be at least a few reasons against it and none for it thus far. I'm plenty open to a counter-argument which consists of something more than "That's how it is, it's cool, if you don't like it don't play Necrons."

Adding more depth to strategy is not a valid arguement? Huh, yet "It's annoying" is? Interesting.

Here.

As stated, adds a great weakness and strength at the same time. Yes, they can camp your NL if you lose him deep within enemy territory. However the other player has to dedicate resources to guarding him aswell. It adds a nice strategic layer. You have to pick and choose your fights, which I actually enjoy. Though I've never been a hero spammer in the first place.
Because of his increadible powers end game. He very much has to have a weakness that can be exploited. It's just that simple.

What exactly are your points besides "It's annoying"?

[DeadlyFred]

Let's see...

1) While other armies are able to heedlessly send their heroes (that's plural) to their doom during assaults, you have to hang back with your single hero so he won't get killed in enemy territory and camped on.

2) You can use a revived NL near an enemy base as a free DS beacon for a buttload of Flayed ones.

3) Even if the person playing Necrons does appreciate the extra challenge of having to micro their NL, I doubt everyone who's NOT playing Necrons enjoys having to micro camping on his gravesite so he doesn't pop up and kill them all in two seconds flat.

Undue distraction and enabling the exploit of cheap tactics don't classify as a layer of strategy, in my book.

In the end, I would much rather see Necrons balanced against some of the cheapness they're capable of presenly rather than have their capacity for legitimate tactics nerfed because of it. If the NL corpse persistence is contributing to these problems and not really serving much positive purpose, I see no reason not to remove it. You can micro your NL so he doesn't die even without the threat of corpse-camping, if that's how you want to play.

[CptStrombosis]

1. I never found it cost effective to throw heroes at people, but if that's what you wanna do. Go ahead. NL saves you the trouble! He starts there :) No time consuming walking. Seriously though, he has teleport for a reason.

2. Let's say it's no longer persistant and you simply rebuilt the NL. How would this solve problem 2? It wouldn't, as you could still teleport in (Without worrying about him being camped) and DS the flayed ones in anyway. So I actually think it would make it worse.

3. This is an opinion one which is no more substantial than "It's annoying" or "It's cool I like it". So it's not worth argueing. You can agree or not, that's up to you.

[dreddnott]

I think the Necron Lord was only given two teleports *because* his body is persistent.

How would us Necron players like it if the Necron Lord rebuilt at the Monolith and had no teleport ability whatsoever? Not very much, methinks!

[DeadlyFred]

I think he has teleport primarily because he's their ONLY hero, thus needs to be able to move around quickly when needed.

Make him unable to teleport into the fog of war? THAT problem would be solved before it occured.

I'm still wondering why anyone playing against the Necrons must be forced to potentially babysit a corpse all for the sake of aesthetics. Especially accounting for the inflated pop cap of the 'Crons. You really can NOT afford to have units standing around waiting for the NL to rez.

It bears to mention that being forced to camp your own base goes entirely against the general design of Dawn of War. A game which is geared towards active, frontline battles.

[Elferx]

You know i tried Necrons in Campaign. I went OMG?

Despite their slow economy, they are self sustainable and Necron Warrior comes free just like Builders. In addition, spamming warriors are also kind of effective though flayed ones are necessary. Lastly, i can't seem to lose any squads.

1 fully reinforced Necron warriors > 1 Fully reinforced squad of berzerker on Normal mode. =.= Kind of amusing.

And the Pariah, quite effective at handling melee CC units. I think they will give Banshees,Kroots,Raptors,ASM and many other CC units a run for their cost.

Monolith. =.= Moving structure. Activate 1, phase into enemy base and summon all your necron warriors and flayed ones and the game is GG.

[Skuijs]

maybe make a time or the unit the lord has ressurected ?

[CptStrombosis]

Sure, you could keep the body as is and simply make it cost 2-3x to ressurect him at Monolith.

I'm still waiting for a reply that isn't "It's Annoying".

[DeadlyFred]

Try reading, I gave plenty. "Annoying" is not exactly the word for it to begin with. I've likewise heard no worthwhile reason to continue abiding with it.

[CptStrombosis]

Really? Where? The only balance problem I saw you mention was the Flayed One Deepstrike. Which removing the persistant body wouldn't eliminate. So what are the balance issues?

[CorsairX]

DeadlyFred
you are trying to change a game for your own liking
go find a mod or make one
or go make a game which will be 100% the way you like it
relic will not change the game for the sake of changing it becouse you want them to
there are a lot of people that like how the necrons are (apart form flayed ones morale damage - little nerf)

so please stop writing all the time how changing the game would be right
we know already you would like to have the necron lord not ressurect where he died fine you have your own opinion
everyone has something he would like to change in the game go check out the suggestion box and post your thoughts there

necron ressurect is what relic wanted the game to look like period
balance changes? probably flayed ones will get a little nerf becouse many many players reported this,
if relic wants there will be a max hardcap for necrons above the normal squad cap we will see what relic does
i personally do not screem imba when i get blown away by a monolith or ressurected necrons, many times i had fun of the enemy who tried to rush to those corpses and hitting turrets mine fields snare traps etc. and im not a necron player, im an ork player nad i have a pretty hard time with necron lord too but i think its ok becouse the races MUST be diffrent
thats all

[n0z3k1ll3r]

Ok, reasons for the persistant body location? A necron army in the field takes a pretty long time to die. If you died with your army (where you really SHOULD be) then you can rebuild your lord at your army in all probability.

[DeadlyFred]

The Necrons could be lead by a unit called Force Commander, who wears red power armor and has a big sledgehammer and still be pretty unique.

I'd like to thank n0z3k1ll3r for finally pointing out a functional reason behind NL persistence, by the way. A point which I will conceed is a good one.

I never said it wasn't a novel idea, and I actually appreciate the "fluffiness" of it but I still stand by my arguments. Forcing people to camp dead units is stupid. If the Lord dies on the field, surrounded by an army, rezes and brings them back to life, yeah, that's cool because that's how Necron's work. When you just have a NL dead in your base, randomly rezing to harass you, that's not.

[Azulsky]

Its not the NL thats the huge problem, people who resort to use him for raiding late game are obviously doing something desperate. Beginning game you usually have a force you are massing so u have something right there to fight back, and most Nec players try to get him back to their bases instead of screwing around in yours. Hes more useful that way.

The problem i have is when u repell an attack and you have 3 Tomb Spider corpses inside your base. To me Tomb Spiders pose a much larger threat than a NL because they have a excellent melee, and 3 can spell disaster if you cant get back. If im playing IG(i float between IG and Eldar) they have gingerbread houses for a base, and can even start spawing brand new Nec squads for free, unlike the NL who can only get like half hp or less squads with his Mass Res.

So i would say leave the NL as he is, but the # of persistent Tomb Spiders needs to cut to 1.

[crimtonic]

Alright, so I have been collecting replays and spending lots of time researching on this issue. Which basically goes hand in hand with playing in general, since it’s impossible to avoid at least one Necron player per game.



One thing I have noticed more than anything else, is that flayed ones are the least of your worries. Warrior squads are neigh invincible, and scale so well that it’s scary.



For example, some one can rush you with one/two full squads of Warriors and you’ll most likely be toast. Or if they are smart, they’ll rush for Warrior upgrade reaserches, which make them literally invincible to any Tier One unit I have in my arsenal as an Eldar player.



A lot of people have been saying “Just run away. Back up, shoot, back up, shoot.” Sadly Necrons aren’t quite as slow as most people assume, they are slow, but not slow enough to make a huge difference, more over they have about the same range as any Tier One ranged unit in any team, and are significantly harder to kill, cheaper and more powerful.

Also last i checked, to win a war you still have to kill your enemy.


I plan to post up some replays I have collected, and also do some testing against Necrons with a friend of mind, once I get the time.

[Quex13]

I agree. Dancing does not work against Necrons because Necrons do not have a moving accuracy penalty. A squad of Warriors moving and a squad standing will have the same accuracy. Therefore, while the Necrons are chasing (using that term lightly, they are still slow) your dancing units they have perfect accuracy. And with the squad size and DPS they have that's no small matter. Now, onto the matter of body persistance...
:rant:

Okay, DeadlyFred is right. NL body persistance ruins the aspect of the game, which is fast-paced high action (for a RTS, that is) in a RTS. Now, how does having to camp the NL help this idea? n0z3k1ll3r (nice l33t-speak (or whatever you would prefer to call it) name, BTW) made the best point for it, which is to be where your army is to revive. Otherwise, it is just as pointless as a death penalty for suicide.

CorsairX, I have yet to see you actually make a good defense for any of these topics. All you say is "no, because that would take away the individualism of the game. and i won't capitalize to make my posts easy to read hehehe...". Honestly, that's not a good excuse. Now, shut up and sit down and try to think of some good counters to these ideas.

Okay, I think that's all for now. Argue with you later!

Note: Yeah, I'm getting a little irridated. Oh well, off to play DC to blow off steam. Wait, too late :steam:. I just love that icon!

[Viper76]

I agree with Purge383... he made some very good points.

Mass flayed... they are slow people... hit them from longer range.

Unit bypass... If you sit on your butt long enough to allow your nec apponant to build a whole army, delete it and build it again and respawn it you deserve to be beat. Just be on the look out for when he "deletes his whole army" then you simply walk in and obliterate him. Yes... if you play dumb you can get overrun by the double pop.

Necron Lord and Tomb Spider Body Persistence... gimme a break... if you let them get into your base you don't have to camp it.... just mass a few turrets and he won't be able to even use them any more because they will be dead before they can res help. Plus you have just taken the spiders and possibly the lord out of the game for them.

BOTTOM LINE

If a race is so over powered they should not be able to be beaten... right.... I have seen Necrons loose just as much as the other races. They are not invincable. (just because you got beat by them dosn't mean they are over-powered. They're play style is new and will take some new thinking to defeat it.)

[Quex13]

Yeah, the turret thing has one problem...not every race has turrets. That means that you are using unit cap to kill something that doesn't take any unit cap. One of my earlier posts talked about this, of how you have to use about two Kroot squads or more to cover for your base, and meanwhile Necrons are attacking your base with 35 cap. 16 cap to 35 cap...no.

[Azulsky]

I have never once let a Necron opponent get to 35 cap, to use that comparision is ridiculous. If you let them get to 35 cap, then you have been playing stupid all game, and need to lose.


And most Necron players only rush once with the NL, his persistence is not that much of a problem, any decent necron player usually pays for him to respawn and teleports him out of your base and back to the field, where he is more useful. Its bad strategy to continue rushing all game with 1 unit, and the NL is effective enough that his absence from the real fighting will lose the Necron player the match. Like i said Tomb Spiders are more of the problem. Having 3 anti vehicle/building skimmers sitting in your base can be really really crippling.

[Stargorger]

I think he meant when the PLAYER gets to 35 cap. Not the opponent.

Yeah, tomb spiders get annoying. However, don't they require the Greater Summoning core to re-spawn, or can you re-build them even after the core has been destroyed?

If not, why not just rush the core? I've found very few opponents who build it in their main base.

[crimtonic]

“Mass flayed... they are slow people... hit them from longer range.”



Very true, this is not a problem.



“Unit bypass... If you sit on your butt long enough to allow your nec apponant to build a whole army, delete it and build it again and respawn it you deserve to be beat. Just be on the look out for when he "deletes his whole army" then you simply walk in and obliterate him. Yes... if you play dumb you can get overrun by the double pop.”



Right, so like, what about the smart guys who delete, rebuild, delete, rebuild, one squad at a time? Hell only a moron deletes their entire army at the same time. Did I mention you can almost get a full Warrior cap in about…7-10 minutes?



In fact I have a replay (which I would like to post if some one can tell me how) in which I build up and march in four Necron Warrior squads, one filled out, one reinforcing, two base level, into an enemy base in four minutes and twenty seconds or so. By minute 9:40 I had destroyed his base and won the game. That’s right guys, I rushed him, with Necrons, and had max cap by the end, while working on researches.

“Necron Lord and Tomb Spider Body Persistence... gimme a break... if you let them get into your base you don't have to camp it.... just mass a few turrets and he won't be able to even use them any more because they will be dead before they can res help. Plus you have just taken the spiders and possibly the lord out of the game for them.”



How many rounds have you played? He can teleport for one, so turrets are worthless against him, mines work about half the time, then ignore him the rest. Did I mention, Mass Resurrection can be done while being shot? And how about his health, you can pop six turrets on him, and he will get a Mass Resurrection out before you can kill him. And Tomb Spiders are vehicles. Yeah.



Oh did I mention the happy little thing about them being survivable enough to walk into your base under heavy fire?


“BOTTOM LINE

If a race is so over powered they should not be able to be beaten... right.... I have seen Necrons loose just as much as the other races. They are not invincable. (just because you got beat by them dosn't mean they are over-powered. They're play style is new and will take some new thinking to defeat it.)”



Whelp, I’m stumped, cause I sure seem to be losing a lot. Infact, I havn’t seen a Necron lose, without a Necron on the opposing team. Necrons are a new play style, which means both its players and enemies have to feel it out. The problem is in an equal match, Necron always wins. Trust me, I have even played players who are worse than me, and lost.

[DeadlyFred]

The firing on the move thing is a good point to bring up. If relying upon the slowness of a Necron advance to outshoot them is considered as a prime tactic for victory they probably shouldn't be so effective on the move. So far as I know (and I could be wrong) the GM are the only infantry which can fire on the move without penalty. Giving the same advantage to the Necrons seems a bit unfair in gameplay terms, even if it is "realistic". They do a heck of alot more damage and are vastly more resilient than GM. Gauss Flayers do have much less range than Lasrifles but again, do more damage and are by far more effective to different armor types as well.

[Dark_Avenger]

i agree with flayed not being overpowered, but i still totally hate the fact that the NL comes beck where it died.
i just played a 1v1 where the guy had a dead NL in my base, my tau army was elsewhere and then the lord came back, and guess what, 5 squads of flayed ones right in my base. i got in there just in time to save only my HQ and i had to start over from there, and not only that i had to have practically my entire army there incase the lord came back, which it did and the flayed ones came down nd fortunately died, but thats because 4 full squads of upgraded fire warriors had to stay in my base in case the NL came back

its ridiculous cause i lost bacuse of map control that i couldnt take with a couple stealth squads against turrets and scarabs everywhere

[Azulsky]

I think we need a thread in the strat section Titled: How to beat Necrons, and we can detail it with every opposing race, and can link to replays.

[DeadlyFred]

No one's saying you can't beat them.

Well, ok, some people might... but that's not the point of this thread. :D

[InReverie]

Necrons are extremely easy to beat so long as you alter your strategies from attacking, say, an SM player. Go ahead and keep crying IMBA if you can't beat them because you refuse to alter your tactics.

[n0z3k1ll3r]

Right, so like, what about the smart guys who delete, rebuild, delete, rebuild, one squad at a time? Hell only a moron deletes their entire army at the same time. Did I mention you can almost get a full Warrior cap in about…7-10 minutes? 7-10 minutes I can have a full squad of Manz, two Nobz Squads, two Gitz squads and both ork heroes. Easily. 7-10 minutes is a LONG time in DoW.

[Shinova]

You could probably fast tech to tier 4 in less than 7 minutes.

[DeadlyFred]

Side note--

If the persistence has to stay, at least put something in the AI that makes the computer not totally worthless in SP when it comes to the NL and Tomb Spiders. It's really a pity that you can't have a nice skirmish against the Necrons since, almost first thing, they run the NL up to your base, get him killed and rarely attempt to teleport him away when he ressurects (so he dies, ad infinitum).

[crimtonic]

I think the problem is that most Tier 1-2 units are incapable of dealing with Necron Tier 1-2 units on an equal basis. A good Necron player can have enough Warriors to stop any rushers in just a few minutes. It seriously doesn't take all that much longer per unit/cost to get a working army for Necron, the problem is that some players just don't have the skill.

Also i think some of you are missing the point on my 9:40 game. its not that i had a working Warrior army and Necron Lord by 9:40. The point is that i was able to rush his base by the forth minute, destroy his troops and defenses and hold on long enough to send reinforcements. And by the 9:40 mark the game was won.

My average game is 21 minutes. this is one heck of a short game, even for DoW.

[ThetaOrion]

The shortest games I have ever played at the HARD setting on Mountain Trails and Kasyr Lutien were with me as the DC Necrons. If I want a short game and a quick victory, I just make myself the Necrons. Build up, and then move out.

--

SKIRMISH MODE OBSERVATIONS:

The End-Game Tau are pretty good. On the Morriah Coast 8P map, I (in position one) as Tau and an AI ally took down the Ork enemies in position 8, while the Necron AI enemy wiped out my three AI allies.

Then it was I as the Tau against three AI enemies, SM, IG, and Necros. I had the 1 and 8 position. I held out for an hour before I decided to give up -- took down a Monolith, went through Necron Lords and Nightshades, and held my territory, but I had nothing left to spare to take territory, and when I tried, I lost those groups that moved away from my listening posts.

My fully researched Tau chewed through IG and SM infantry as if they weren't there. The IG and SM never seemed to produce any tanks, though. Very often in Dark Crusade, the AI NEVER produces any tanks, even after an hour of playing skirmish mode. But, the Necrons had one of everything, and they just kept coming and coming. I could have won 1 Tau vs 3, if the Necrons wouldn't have been in there on the enemy list.

Anyway, there are definitely signs of imbalance in the game!

Not only are there imbalances, but there are AI bugs as well -- AI that sometimes never builds a tank for a whole hour of play!! It's as if the AI for all of the AI factions (except the Necrons) was never finished -- no end game AI that builds tanks. Only the Necron AI gets to build tanks, and the human player. None of the other AI allies or enemies are getting to build tanks on these 6P and 8P maps I have tried, only the Necron AI. Now that creates MAJOR IMBALANCES in the gameplay! Let me tell you! Some people want to see 'infantry only' games, and I have seen a few on these larger maps. You, as the human or the Necron, kind of have an advantage when you are the only one who can and does build tanks. An INCOMPLETE AI can create gameplay imbalances every bit as much and severe as bad or wonky unit stats.

The FIVE ORIGINAL factions seem to take a back seat to the TWO NEW factions, as well. Also, there are hints, thanks to the Necrons, that almost all Good vs Evil fights will go to the EVIL side, as long as the EVIL side has at least one faction of Necrons in the mix.

[Shinova]

SKIRMISH MODE OBSERVATIONS

As long as you understand that the points you made apply only to skirmish games, including the "there are definitely signs of imbalance in the game!" bit, then that's okay.

[ThetaOrion]

Yep, Skirmish Mode is a different animal than online play against humans or Campaign play. That's why I tried to emphasize in the title that I was talking about Skirmish Mode.

It's like the Skirmish Mode AI was never finished, at times, which does indeed introduce gameplay imbalances between the different factions during Skirmish gameplay against the AI and with the AI -- a whole other aspect of the game that could use some balancing treatment in and of itself. I can only imagine what imbalances you all are experiencing during online play. For myself, I have only had the game a day, and I'm already looking forward to Thudmeizer's AI Skirmish Mod for Dark Crusade.

[Shinova]

Actually, online balance is very solid now. Majority opinion (at least the majority that's made up of experienced, good players) is that it's way, way better than WA. There are a few little kinks to iron out, but nothing big.

Most of the whines and complaints about imbalance going on in the forums are most likely from players who, in WA, did nothing but play long games where they spam one high-tier unit with no end. DC totally kills that sort of gameplay, and these players can't (or refuse to) adapt and so they complain. They won't change themselves to fit the game so they'd rather have the game change to fit them.

[crimtonic]

“Actually, online balance is very solid now. Majority opinion (at least the majority that's made up of experienced, good players)”



I most defiantly agree, it has become a lot better than with WA, I don’t have to spam Fire Prisms and Warp Spiders to win any more, and have found some strange and interesting new strategies that give me a new leg up on the competition, because of it. Also, they buffed IG, yey!



“is that it's way, way better than WA. There are a few little kinks to iron out, but nothing big.”



Exactly, and some of these kinks belong to Necron. If enough people are going “this is a problem” then it probably really is a problem, the trick is to figure out exactly what causes that problem. I don’t think any teams need an over haul, but they do need some tweaking.



“Most of the whines and complaints about imbalance going on in the forums are most likely from players who, in WA, did nothing but play long games where they spam one high-tier unit with no end. DC totally kills that sort of gameplay, and these players can't (or refuse to) adapt and so they complain. They won't change themselves to fit the game so they'd rather have the game change to fit them.”



This is a very ridiculous assertion,


The idea that only experienced players can say something is imbalanced, is completely unfounded. (Why should I have to be an expert to beat said ‘imbalanced thing’ when the player is the same skill as me.)


I and many others who are calling certain things imbalanced are very experienced and well oriented with DoW and RTSs in general.




Also I would like to thank every one who has posted in this thread, regardless of your views. I am greatly pleased by how civilized and progressive we have managed to keep this thread so far. Keep it up :clap:

[Quex13]

I also agree. The game is more balanced than WA, and there are little imbalances. I'm going to compare this to a house. If there is a single crack, not much larger that 3" long, in a perfect house, and then the same house except with more problems, which are you going to notice the crack more? The perfect house, because that is the only problem. In the dirty house, the crack is probably rather minor. It just happens that some of those cracks belong to Necrons. I don't play online much, but I have noticed that whatever side gets Necrons on it almost always wins, unless there is a Necron on the other side. I myself have noticed that it is extremely easy to win with Necrons, and against the same race, same difficulty, and same map, but me playing two different races, one of which is Necrons, playing the other race other than Necrons is harder. What does this tell you?

I do have to say that what Shinova said about the players refusing to change has some validitity. However, that is not always the case. It's just when someone of a higher skill level loses to another player with a lower skill level while they both play different races, somethings wrong with either the high level skill player's race or the lower skill level's race.

[ThetaOrion]

Today, we had a LAN party with Dark Crusade. All I can say is 'awesome'!!!

That's the way the game was meant to be played, that's for sure!!

The AI seemed to just do better and be better with LAN multiplayer play.

We did 3 humans vs 3 AI, team play. Since the other boys were new to the game, we tended to go easy and do team play.

Good stuff all around!!

It's a different experience Multiplayer than it is in Skirmish Mode, that's for sure.

We tended to play as Necron and Tau, simply because those factions tended to be the strongest on average. The Orks, Eldar, and IG multiplayer AI rush heavy early game at the HARD setting, often showing up with Commander and troops in your base before you get your first unit out the door. SM and Chaos seem to turtle up a lot and just wait for you to come.

Whether you call it imbalances or just different styles of play, the different factions are, well, different.

Depending upon what we played against, that basically determined the best difficulty setting. We found the Standard setting adequately challenging when the Eldar, IG, and Ork rushers were the AI we had chosen.

It's hard to declare the thing imbalanced, or unplayable, in multiplayer mode. It's just highly varied. We all, all three of us here, though, seem to think that the Necrons have a definite advantage overall, especially from the middle of the game to the end of the game. The Necrons definitely are not the faction for implementing a rush into enemy territory, and thus not the best for early game take-downs of the enemy.

Overall, it seems to balance out adequately. Although, I'm sure Relic could improve it over time and with additional input.

[Shinova]

This is a very ridiculous assertion,

The idea that only experienced players can say something is imbalanced, is completely unfounded. (Why should I have to be an expert to beat said ‘imbalanced thing’ when the player is the same skill as me.)

You have a choice of trying hard and getting better, or refusing to and instead complain to the developers to get the game changed to suit your skill level.


I and many others who are calling certain things imbalanced are very experienced and well oriented with DoW and RTSs in general.

If you are as experienced as you say you are, then why are you having the problems you say or imply you are having?


I would like to mention what someone on this forums once pointed out (I believe it was DukeRustfield). He mentioned that from his experience with DC online, all-Necron teams online almost always die off. If the assertion that having a Necron on a team means that team will win, then obviously an all-Necron team should win, right?

But Duke's experience is showing otherwise. Why is that? Whatever the reason, it doesn't support the Necrons' supposed overpoweredness.

[InReverie]

I would like to mention what someone on this forums once pointed out (I believe it was DukeRustfield). He mentioned that from his experience with DC online, all-Necron teams online almost always die off. If the assertion that having a Necron on a team means that team will win, then obviously an all-Necron team should win, right?

But Duke's experience is showing otherwise. Why is that? Whatever the reason, it doesn't support the Necrons' supposed overpoweredness.

In my experience, this is absolutely true 95% of the time. Necrons are hard to have as teammates because they are extremely ineffective in reinforcing their allies. The best way to play with a team is have one Necron player, and have the other races cover his ass while they build armies of his own and have a big smash all together.

[ThetaOrion]

it doesn't support the Necrons' supposed overpoweredness. [in online play]

--

Right, and on the other side of the coin, in Skirmish Mode Play. I have now seen the Ork AI overrun the Tau and the Necron AI a couple of times now.

Once that Ork hoard gets going strong 20 minutes or a half hour into the game, the Orks are phenominal, and the Necrons just can't keep up with that.

In something like a 3vs3, put the Orks in the middle, where their flanks are protected, and give the Ork AI time to build, and watch them take you down in Skirmish Mode at HARD setting.

It's the Imperial Guard that are the first ones eliminated almost every game they are in. They are pathetic, from an AI standpoint, the easiest faction for everyone to overrun.

And, the Chaos AI have been surprisingly easy to eliminate as well. With a couple of ultra weak factions in there, it can make the Necrons look overpowered, as well.

Anyway, offline Skirmish Mode play isn't perfectly balanced either, but I don't think the Necrons are the clear winners all the time either.

In fact, I think part of the issue being witnessed or documented has to do with the fact that the Necrons are probably the race that is the most "Newbie" friendly, the easiest to play and micromanage, which at times will make them appear overpowered as well.

Hundreds of different variables or factors coming into play. I have never seen so many different and diverse factions in a single game before!!

The game is a winner, even if it could use a bit more polish and balancing!!

[Troglodiste]

Most of these issues wouldn't be such a problem by themselves. It's all together that they become a major balance headache. The only one I really can't stand is the Tomb Spiders. Turreting around dead Tomb Spiders doesn't work, by the way.They chew up basic turrets, and good luck getting them upgraded.

[Chris]

I would like to mention what someone on this forums once pointed out (I believe it was DukeRustfield). He mentioned that from his experience with DC online, all-Necron teams online almost always die off. If the assertion that having a Necron on a team means that team will win, then obviously an all-Necron team should win, right?

But Duke's experience is showing otherwise. Why is that? Whatever the reason, it doesn't support the Necrons' supposed overpoweredness.

This is using broken logic.

In winter assault imperial guard are clearly the weakest race, but having an IG team mate in big team games is actually very useful and can be combined with other races EG eldar for some very cheesy/imbalanced strategies. Does this mean that IG are actually a powerful/imbalanced race? Of course not.

Without wanting to sound like a prick Duke's experiences are not what I'd base my findings and opinions on. If you wan't to see examples of imbalance look for replays of the players holding positions 1 and 2 on the DC ladder, both playing necron.

[Quex13]

In every game but one game the team with Necrons won. The one game had (this replay is in the Battle Archives) Tau, Chaos, and Tau vs. Necron Tau Necron. The TCT won, though it looked rough at times. Still Necrons IMO are the easiest race to play. Little micro, no mixed units, just critical mass and steamroll. I think all my points have been stated before, so until someone comes up with a counter-arguement, I have nothing. BTW, there seem to be few posts about how the Necrons are not IMBA coming in now...


And Troglodiste made a good point, about how all the little cracks made the house fall down (heh, I loved that analogy myself).

[ThetaOrion]

Offline Skirmish Mode Games:

I just had another hour long game on 6P Kasyr Lutien that to me speaks directly to the balance issue and the myth that the Necrons are overpowered.

I as Necrons, Chaos, and Ork AI allies vs Eldar, Tau, and Space Marines on 6P Kasyr Lutien.

If the enemy can hold out and build tanks and a complex base, it's a whole other story. Sometimes the Relic AI doesn't build tanks or decent bases, but when they do, it's a completely different game.

In this game, the Eldar were the first to go, destroyed by my Ork Ally and my scarab infiltrators that saw through their Eldar cloak or shroud.

My Chaos Ally was the next to go, a half hour later, taken down by Tau and Space Marines. I almost got the Space Marine's base with my Restored Monolith. But, the Space Marines destroyed my base first, and the Tau Killed my Monolith. I lost.

The Tau and SM were building tanks!!! They had one of everything!

My Ork and Chaos AI allies never built a single tank! Even though the Orks had taken over half the map at a certain point in the game, no tanks.

If you get a game where the enemy AI is building tanks, especially a game where my AI allies never built a tank after an hour of play, you are looking at a situation where the enemy AI can and will win, even against the Necrons, even with the Necrons on the team. The team with the Necrons didn't win.

I also lost last night on 6P Testing Grounds as Tau with a Necron AI ally. On a rare occasion, the Ork AI enemy was building tanks. The Orks built one of everything, and had Squiggoth after Squiggoth. The Necrons were on my team and not on the other team, and we lost again. If the AI decides to build tanks or is able to build tanks, it's a whole other game, and the claims of Necrons being overpowered is only a myth.

I held a map for over an hour as the Tau on 6P Morriah Coast, against IG, SM, and Necrons. The Necrons were on the other team, but I held out against 3 of them, alone for an hour before I surrendered. I wiped out the Necron Monolith. Once that goes down, the Necrons have problems. The Tau Rock!!

The Necrons might have an early game advantage, but the Necrons can be really hard to win with if the game goes towards an hour. The Tau and Orks are much better Tier 4 end-game, much more versatile!

This Ranking is how the long 1 hour games have fallen out for me on average over a number of games:

1. Tau
2. Orks
3. Necrons
4. Space Marines
5. Eldar
6. Chaos
7. Imperial Guard

The Imperial Guard are always first to go, followed by the Chaos and the Eldar.

The factions that always remain are the Tau, the Orks, the Necrons, and the Space Marines -- in the games that last over half an hour, the games where the AI builds tanks.

The Necrons aren't ranking number one, especially if the enemy AI builds tanks.

It's just not proving to be the case that the Necrons always win, but the Necrons always win on the maps where the enemy AI never builds tanks -- there's a Relic bug there that greatly influences balance and the outcome of games. If the AI doesn't build tanks ever, they are eventually eliminated, no matter what faction it is. The Necrons always build tanks, but the other AI factions don't always build tanks. And, in this Dark Crusade game, there are times when the AI never builds tanks, even after an hour of gameplay. That's the real 'balance issue,' the AI not building tanks, when it comes to Offline Skirmish Mode play and Dark Crusade.

[Vorlock]

Thats very interesting, but i dont think the skirmish mode with 1 player and 5 computer AI's gives any information on which race is stronger than another. I think it only points out which AI is better written.

[politrix]

If you truly want to understand balance, you have to play automatch.

[Archraven]

In every game but one game the team with Necrons won. The one game had (this replay is in the Battle Archives) Tau, Chaos, and Tau vs. Necron Tau Necron. The TCT won, though it looked rough at times. Still Necrons IMO are the easiest race to play. Little micro, no mixed units, just critical mass and steamroll. I think all my points have been stated before, so until someone comes up with a counter-arguement, I have nothing. BTW, there seem to be few posts about how the Necrons are not IMBA coming in now...

Hah! Which player were you? I was the Chaos player.

[crimtonic]

I would like to highlight a recent series of games I had with a ‘friend’ of mine. He and I were arguing about the imbalance of the Necrons. He and I are Eldar players of about equal skill, though defiantly Definitely styles.



Now I challenged him to show me how to beat Necrons with Eldar, and prove I was wrong. Well something like 5 games later, he had lost every single one. I would like to give you all a brief run down of the exact game strategies for me, and how he attacked from my point of view. Also if some one could tell me how I have all the replays for each game saved.



Round 1

Oasis of Shar.



We were restricted to only our bases and the left side (from position 1’s point of view) for expansion/capturing. To simulate a full team match.



I did my usual Necron strategy of sending my first builder to cap the nearest SP, and built 4 more builders and over the course of the game, filled my Que with Warriors.



As soon as the second Builder came out, I had it cap another SP, the third built a second Monolith for 350 power, leaving me with 10 power. My fourth builder built a power plant, while my first Oboliskized its SP. From this point on I double pumped Warriors, finished Oboliskizing my three SPs and built more generators and a Summoning Core.



After getting 4 squads, 2 fully maxed, 2 with 5 squad members and a NL I charged the left side. It was empty, so I started capping. Now I had five maxed squads with the first Warrior upgrade and an NL in what was more or less the ‘middle’.



At this point he attacked, using three wraith lords and a squad of Guardians. I destroyed them all with minimal losses. From here I proceeded into his base, killed another three WL and two guardians and destroyed his base for the win.



Round 2

Khorn something something. Lots of potwholes.



Imidiatly I followed the exact same strategy as with the first map. I had my full 6 warriors, one wraith, level 1 upgrade and NL by the time he made his first attack. A swarm of Reapers.



He obviously had a range advantage, so I had to close that and attacked. He pulled his forces back and then began firing again. Perfect dancing form. I decided to return back to my base and recoup the losses.



After this he attacked again, this time I accepted the losses and continued to press forwards, he only had so much room. Using my NL teleport to harass sections of the Reapers, I marched unstoppably forwards and one squad at a time killed his reapers. I lost one squad.



He tried to build as fast as he could, but my Warriors were just to much. And I destroyed his base.



Round 3

Fear



I followed the same building order that I had been using the last two rounds. Again he tried a new tactic, a rush, two banshee squads and a guardian squad. Well executed, as I only had 3 squads of 4 Warriors and this time a NL and level 1 upgrade a little earlier. I lost one squad and had one damaged obelisk from the early part of the rush. However within a few minutes after the attack I had maxed my squad cap.



He quit saying something about knowing how to beat me and I should rehost. I was about to attack.



Round 4

Rail Road (I think…small map with two paths)



Normal build strategy, except I built builder, builder, warrior, builder, builder. And had the second worker build a generator and the third builder build a Monolith. The others behaved normaly in capping SPs.



Within a few moments I had 3 warrior squads, 1 at 4, 1 at 6 and 1 at 3. two more on the way. I decided to march around the right side and take a Critical Location. I marched in and slaughtered his Farseer and an upgraded banshee squad and one Guardian squad. Capped the crit point, and came under attack on the other pathway by two guardian squads and a Banshee squad. I had only one Warrior there, so I teleported the other three, now having 4, 5, and 7. I slaughtered them quickly, but he managed to escape with a stragler from the banshee and one guardian squad. Realizing I had a very low cap, I charged his base with what was now 8, 8, 7, 6. Four squads of Warriors on the one side, and 6, 7, NL. On the other.



Soon I had Second level upgrades and a Tomb Spider in his base. He lost.





Round 5

Some winter map…



Standard building procedure.



He teleported a worker next to my base, and built a webway, two turrets and an Aspect Portal before I had a chance to even cap my third SP. Needless to say I had to avoid that SP as the turrets were right next to it. Then he teleported his BoneSinger into my base and built a turret, I killed him just before it was finished, but he had a spare and sent that in, that got a whole Webway and second turret there. I retreated all my outstanding 5 squads of 3 through 6 back, and eliminated it.



After procuring upgrades, 2 more SPs, and NL I attacked, and destroyed his forward base. His opposition was something along the lines of 3 Reapers, one banshee, two guardians and a Farseer. I killed them all and the base.



Then I made a tomb spider, Harvested myself an Immortal squad, and proceeded forwards. Against 3 turrets, one SP2 turret, one Falcon (Anti Infantry upgrade), three guardian squads and a reaper squad, i was able to completely annihilate him.





What does this all mean? No matter what he through at me, in all these games, I never lost more than two squads. (Some games I retreated my squads at 1 man left standing.)



That includes killing 6 wraiths with the same force. A full swarm of perfectly retreat-dancing reapers, a well executed Banshee/Guardian rush, and a turret rush. This says to me, that Necrons are overbalanced.



So now we can easily say that the Necrons are not only good at killing IG (which they are, unless you get bassys and HWTs) but also the ‘counter’ Eldar. And are there for imbalanced.

Again I do have replays of all of these and more if some one would be kind enough to tell me how to upload them.

[Question]

Am i the only one who has noticed that warriors do ridiculous damage to everything?

They rape vehicles. Im serious. 2 hammerheads vs 4-5 squads of warriors. I didnt even kill one squad worth.

A HQ dies so fast its amazing. It was like watching the old chaos defiler autocanon at work.

I had crisis suits with flamers, commander wtih max upgrades, FWs, broadsides already entrenched, and they did nothing against overwatched warriors. Nothing. He didnt even bother with wraiths, flayed ones, or immortals. The warriors just took care of -everything- in a few volleys. He just overwatched a basic unit that has free 3 squad members, and he completely beat the crap out of a mixed T3 force with vehicles. How does this make any sense whatsoever? A basic unit that counters every possible unit on the field, that is so cheap that you can just overwatch them constantly and not worry about your econ..........

For crying out loud hard capped flash gitz were getting outshot by warriors with wartrak support!

As for the res orb, aside from its buginnes, its ridiculous. Think about this. A huge battle fought near your enemy's base, you lose all the warriors, and then when he counter-attacks.......you resurrect them all and target his power gens and LPs. Kiss The econ goodbye.

Edit : My first impression from using necrons online was "bs". The 4 points at my base was enough to push me to 100% build time easily, and then i just dropped power gens. I overwatched FREE WARRIORS and set the rally point outside his base. A 8 man warrior squad costed me 170 power. That 8 man warrior squad was wiping out 400+ req worth of units with ease, so much so that i never even lost half a squad worth. I was costing the enemy at least 5x the amount of res he was costing me.

T2 firewarriors were slaughtered by T1 warriors. I didnt even get the first upgrade, and the results were more or less the same......i lost way less resources than he did, except this time he had T2 firewarriors with shield drones active, and he still lost by a huge margin.

The entire game i built nothing but warriors and the lord. I didnt need to. The warriors were killing everything in sight. 2 squads of warriors took down the HQ in unbelivably fast time.

This is even worse than the old chaos defiler autocanon.

[wnmnkh]

@ crimtonic

Go replay section in the forum, click new thread, write in proper format written in guideline. Then scroll down, and you will see "Manage Attachments" Button in additional options, click that button, and you will see how to do this.


Plus : By the way, Necrons are not that strong : warriors still have poor damage to vehicles; they, for example, cannot take down nasty drones.
There are so many weaknesses in Necrons

[ThetaOrion]

Thats very interesting, but i dont think the skirmish mode with 1 player and 5 computer AI's gives any information on which race is stronger than another. I think it only points out which AI is better written.

--

Well, that's the way I seem to see it, too. But, I have had the AI coders and experts from the AI Skirmish Mod tell me for months that AI doesn't affect balance and that no AI is written any better than any other AI, in the AI Skirmish Mod at least.

I found out that each person sees this completely differently, and it's easy to go to war over it. :flamer:

It's all semantics, though.

In offline Skirmish Mode:
Gameplay = Balance + AI.
TheUltimateResult = Unit Stats + AI.

What is witnessed by the user is a combination of Unit Stats and AI, so you really can't point the finger at either one definitively. They are inseparable in Skirmish Mode against the AI.

Offline Skirmish Mode against the AI is a mode of Dawn of War, and it has been since Dawn of War came out. It's Relic's responsibility to balance Skirmish Mode gameplay as much as any other part of the game.

Changing the balance stats or changing the AI changes the Gameplay. And, the end user only can see the Gameplay when he is playing against the AI! Whether you want to attribute the quirks to a bad AI or to a bad Balance, either is part of the mix and either can be blamed.

We could point fingers all day, but the truth is that the Gameplay Balance is out of whack in Dark Crusade, whether we choose to point the finger at the Unit Stats or the AI.

Tonight, I turned it around and played as the forces of good on Kasyr Lutien. I as Space Marines, with Eldar AI and Tau AI against Necrons AI, Orks AI, and Chaos AI -- in Skirmish Mode at the Hard setting.

My Eldar went down first, then my Tau Ally, and then I was destroyed last. I never saw the enemy base, and neither did any of my AI allies. The game was over in less than 15 minutes, a record loss for me.

So, that kind of told me that the Skirmish Mode Gameplay against the AI severely favors the forces of evil, of which the Necrons were the winners and had the highest stats when I was done. This Gameplay is probably the worst (most imbalanced) that Relic has ever put out for Skirmish Mode of all the plain vanilla that Relic has put out.

In the end, I come back to TOPIC, and proved to my satisfaction that as an AI enemy, the Necrons are indeed overpowered. And, the forces of evil outweigh the forces of good in the overall Gameplay Balance. The Necrons had huge stats reported at the end of the game, ten times more than the Eldar.

Eldar AI and Imperial Guard AI are always worthless, no matter which side they are on, which only serves to make every other faction look better and perform better in Skirmish Mode, including the Necron AI.

Finally, if Relic balances it for online play, gets the unit stats right for online play, the thing can still be imbalanced in Skirmish mode play, simply because one AI is better than another AI. The quality of the AI (or the 'balance' of the AI) also influences the Gameplay Balance or the Feel of the Gameplay -- the final results that the user witnesses while playing Skirmish Mode in Dawn of War or its expansions.

I know that some would disagree with my summation, but that has been my personal experience nonetheless over the years with Dawn of War.

Summary: From the other side of the coin, when the Necrons are the enemy rather than when I'm the Necrons, the Necrons really do look to be overpowered. I think that we all have a legitimate complaint or a legitimate Balance Issue here, and Relic should really make more effort and take the time to balance Dark Crusade when they get the chance to do so.

[Shinova]

I am near-resigned to the fact that Relic will, in the future, smash Necrons with a heavy nerfstick because all the people who can't think enough to save their butts will whine and whine and whine, and Relic will be forced to cater to their wishes to keep the majority playerbase intact.

[Question]

Instead of accusing anti-necron posters as "whiners" maybe you would want to address some of the concerns raised about the necron race?

[Shinova]

Instead of accusing anti-necron posters as "whiners" maybe you would want to address some of the concerns raised about the necron race?

You should do a search of my posts and see how many times I've addressed anti-Necron posters' concerns.

[Old Painless]

Instead of accusing anti-necron posters as "whiners" maybe you would want to address some of the concerns raised about the necron race?
Maybe the whiners should buy some artillery ?

[Question]

You should do a search of my posts and see how many times I've addressed anti-Necron posters' concerns.

And at some point you decided to contribute to discussion by making snarky comments about whiners.

Artillery isnt the end all against necrons clearly. IIRC SM whirlwind is T3, eldar have no artillery at all, orks dont have any long range artillery till T4, and basilks are late T2.

[Old Painless]

Late T2 ? How do you work that out ? To get heavy destroyers (anti-vehicle) i need to buy a greater summoning core which is roughly equal (ish) to the IG T2.

So far they are the only thing that can take out Basilisks without getting pulped that i have found, but i have a lot more games to play before i call imba.

[Question]

Erm i meant basilks are late T2. What are you talking about?

[Quex13]

How about Immortals? What are those? Oh yeah, anti-vehicle infantry.

Archraven, I just watched the replay. You did a good job though!

Now onto the AI, I have noticed that evil AI is better. With me being Necrons with two 'Cron AI vs. a IG, Necron, and SM AI, my team won within 5 minutes. Ork AI is simply insane in T4 because that's when the just horde you. They had a Squiggoth (my first time the AI build a Relic unit) and hundreds of Orks (it was two AI's). My ally and I were simply annihilated. There was nothing we could do, since it was 2v2v2v2 against SM, IG, and Orks. While my ally (we were both Tau, and this is in Skirmish) and I were killing IG and SM, the Orks suddenly pop out of nowhere with hundreds of troops and flood my ally's base. I was next, and when the onslaught came, nothing held them back. I had Krootox coming out my ears and Kroot + hounds in my base and they couldn't do a thing. Ork AI is simply amazing, and, oh yeah, did I mention this was on STANDARD!!!!1 I normally kill Hard and Standard easy, but for large team games I use Standard. Orks got a nice boost in DC though. I used to in WA play against Orks all the time and never have a problem.

As for artillery, not all races have it! The closest the Tau have are Harbingers or Skyrays, Orks have Lemans, IG has Basilisks, Eldar have nothing except Fire Prisms, SM have Whirlwinds and Chaos has Defilers. So, no, artillery is not the perfect balance against Necrons.

Also, I too can see a huge nerf for Necrons, but only if people use exploits. If everybody plays fair I can see minor nerfing. Still, there is no doubt that Necrons need a nerf, it's just a question of intensity.

[McGilles]

The AI is only hard to defeat on Insane.

I usually play VS harder and sometimes vs insane, but on standard its just a piece of cake with 1 hand on my back and 1 eye closed :)

On harder in a 2v2v2v2 i can easily win with my brother, nothing to worry about the whole time, insane is a different story!

I find standard just really boring.

[wnmnkh]

Insane AI receives additional resources benefit; the resource rate is more than twice of that of normal. That's why Ork AI spams units a lot.

In real world of online gaming, however, never happens.

[Shinova]

And at some point you decided to contribute to discussion by making snarky comments about whiners.

It's already obvious that there are others who have already thoroughly addressed the issues raised in this thread, so there's no need for me to repeat what they've already said.

[Vasot]

I hope Relic release a patch to balance these expansion soon



because in it's current state it totally destroys my game experience


The AI is only hard to defeat on Insane.

I usually play VS harder and sometimes vs insane, but on standard its just a piece of cake with 1 hand on my back and 1 eye closed :)

Yeah right...
2 or 3 large bases against your 1 small base is a piece of cake for you in Normal difficulty

Whatever man

What a f genius :claw:


Insane AI receives additional resources benefit; the resource rate is more than twice of that of normal.

Actually it's not only in the Insane AI that gets extra resource rate...it does it also on normal compared to easy

The AI is cheating

[Chris]

Taking out 2-3 large bases in normal mode on the campaign can be done without too much trouble once you learn how the AI thinks and reacts.

As far as addressing necron issues, the only thing I really see people say is "lawl move away from them!" Yeah this is great on paper or if the map was just a big blank canvas. I've heard ppl say that solar pulse 'only' covers a 30 range area and covers maybe 3 squads max. In a tier 1 battle that could be my whole army! Moving away from flayed ones is fine and dandy, but what if I have flayed ones behind me and warriors infront of me? What if the necron player uses chronometron? You don't just 'easily walk away' from situations like that.

[ThetaOrion]

It's already obvious that there are others who have already thoroughly addressed the issues raised in this thread, so there's no need for me to repeat what they've already said.

--

Yes, this thread is rather complete, hopefully enough so to actually get Relic's attention.

Despite the Gameplay Imbalances of the AI and the imbalances of the Unit Stats, Dark Crusade is still a winner, probably the best game that I have ever purchased. I like it already, despite the fact that DC often feels unfinished and unbalanced, here and there. DC is already my favorite game of all the games I have.

That's why my expectations are so high.

If Relic will just take some of this input seriously and give us a good AI for the campaign and offline skirmish play and a good balance to the unit stats for online play against humans, and fix up a few bugs, in some future patch, then the game will be perfect.

Balancing and finishing the AI and balancing the Unit Statistics should be the top things on Relic's list for the coming patch, imho.

Hopefully, they will get the message, and in time give us the greatest computer game of all time.

Thank you!

[Old Painless]

Balancing and finishing the AI and balancing the Unit Statistics should be the top things on Relic's list for the coming patch, imho. I really cant see the problem. Until the necron buys destroyers he will be outranged by all T1 goodies, scout sniper rifles to name but one. Solar pulse allows you to close with them.

[Quex13]

I totally agree. Dark Crusade is perhaps my favorite RTS of all time (yes, even better than the almighty Starcraft!). The game is extremely fun, and even with the Necrons being slightly (I mean slightly) IMBA it is still great.

As for the Harder on 2v2v2v2, yeah, but I had a AI ally! Against Harder with another good human I could win, perhaps even insane. Though I like the enemy to get smarter, not have to cheat to win. That is mainly why I play on Hard and Standard.

[Chris]

I really cant see the problem.

Download DoWSanc reps and see for yourself. The only reliable way to beat necrons revolves around abusing the summoning core bugged armour, anything else is pretty hit and miss.

[crimtonic]

http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?p=1856602#post1856602

REPLAYS! watch them. they prove the point well. as soon as i locate which other replays are the correct ones i will upload those as well, since they are not 1v1 games.

Thanks to Wnmnkh for the information on uploading my replays.

[ozzy]

--

Balancing and finishing the AI and balancing the Unit Statistics should be the top things on Relic's list for the coming patch, imho.


Balancing unit stats is likely, but Relic is never going to improve the AI much, if at all. My theory is that if the AI were awesome people would have less of a need to play online to get a satisfying gaming experience and it would also be a big bonus for the assholes who pirate the game as online play is often the biggest incentive to purchase.

[Hiroshi_Tea]

that's why there's an AI mod that will probably come out for DC

[Old Painless]

Download DoWSanc reps and see for yourself. The only reliable way to beat necrons revolves around abusing the summoning core bugged armour, anything else is pretty hit and miss. I'll have a look. So far its mostly Lazerflips bitching thats putting me off taking much notice. lol

I haven't even worked out more than 1 effective BO and people are screaming the house down and it's just far too early to call imba yet.
When the necron players actually have some idea how to use them it might be different, currently i am not in that boat.

[dreddnott]

I have noticed that the AI is very poor compared to the original Dawn of War and Winter Assault AI. Sometimes it will try to go through an entire game against another AI with only Tier 1 and 1.5 units. Or maybe it'll decide to never reinforce any squads, or never build more than one plasma generator, but still try to do everything else, or forget about infantry and only build vehicles.

I've had radically different results from game to game when observing the AI (deleting my HQ and watching), even if I restart the game with the exact same races on the same map. Using the way the AI plays against itself to gain any kind of insight about balance is just about worthless. If you have a good eye and a general knowledge of armour types and the DPS tables, it's pretty easy to separate unit stats from AI ability, but still...

By the way, Insane only seems to get a 50% bonus. Harder is around 20%, and Hard is at parity with a human player.

All anyone has to do to defeat the Necrons is either rape their Summoning Core if they're teching (will be patched), do a Vespid rush if they're playing Tau (not guaranteed), or fast-tech to Landspeeders as Space Marines. I'm currently very impressed by the Landspeeder rush replays in our own Battle Archives forum.

[crimtonic]

I've been contemplating that Necron and other teams are not imbalanced but that Eldar and IG are just under powered per price.

i plan to do some reaserch, but so far Reapers have proven very cost ineffective.

[Njorhg]

Oh well, Eldar has got "extremely cost effective per cost" as soon as they got some upgrades...

Look at Banshees, look at their stats. Those are real good...
When you have spent some lots of Req and Power upgrading them :p

[dreddnott]

The cost-effectiveness of Eldar unit upgrades depends on how many of the affected unit you have or plan to field. Call of War is probably not a good idea if you never field Banshees, or make one squad late in the game. However, if you've, say, three or four squads of Howling Banshees, the upgrade suddenly becomes very cheap as far as its per-unit cost is concerned.

[DamnNecrons]

Ironically, I've had good luck against Necrons as IG, provided I can get to tier 2 before I sight them. If they catch me early they tend to hurt.

[crimtonic]

Okay i gotta say, I have been playing Tau, Necron and SM alot..and wow, i am losing ALOT less. Worse yet, i have found that SM Land SPeeder rushes, are horrificaly effective. Four of them can tear through an equal number of squads in just one or two minutes...ouch. Worse, these are proving to be inexpensive, low cap cost, power house units. A swarm of 10 (max) can easily tople a base and all its defenses with minimal infantry support (i toasted a whole Necron and Tau base with 10 LSs, 2 SM squads, Greyknights and 2 dreadnaughts.)

Ouch...just ouch....

More over, i have found this to be the single most (and possibly single period) effective tool for toasting a well upgraded Warrior squad, Even immortals can't hack it.

This means, yeah Necrons have a counter, its just exclusive to SM. i have tried this with Eldar vypers, it works, but only JUST.

[Enteris]

I'd just like to suggest the first thing you fix is the knock back that necrons have in cc. I know of NO other race basic infantry that has a knock back effect in CC. that's just not right, imho.

[CptStrombosis]

Solar pulse recharge time needs a nerf, You should have to think about when you are going to use it.

Flayed ones building damage needs reduced considerably.

NW's base vehicle damage needs a reduction.

Those are the main problems I have with Necrons.

[ThetaOrion]

The intitial impression is that the Necrons are overpowered and unbeatable. I always feel tinge of real fear when I go up against the Necrons.

But, with the right strategies or combinations of things, the Necrons are rather easy to beat.

The Necrons are just completely different. I'm not sure I know what I would do to change the Necrons.

I like the way that Relic did the Necrons!

Redoing the Necrons or restructuring them so that they build bases and machine shops would not be the way to go -- just to balance the game. I like how different the Necrons are. Redoing them or undoing the 'breakthrough' that Relic made with the Necrons, would ruin them. I never thought that Relic would get a system for the Necrons that I would like, but I really like the way they did the Necrons, and I already don't want Relic to change them in some future patch, even if the game stays somewhat out of balance or somewhat unpredictable forever more. The Necrons add an unpredictable feature or flavor to the game that was never there before. Lots of wild and random variables there.

On these Relic Forums, a dedicated Space Marine rush with LandSpeeders has proven to be an effective way to beat the Necrons early and fast.

And, I have seen it a dozens of times now -- fully capped and fully tiered Orks can steam roll over the top of fully capped Necrons and Tau simultaneously. The Orks are unbeatable and untouchable when they are fully capped -- except I found the way to beat fully capped Orks with Necron Lord Resurrection, Flayed One teleporting to the Ork Stronghold, and concentrating on Ork Strongholds while resurrecting over and over again while your caps repeatedly go to 0/0 as the Orks completely wipe you out. But, rinse and repeat, resurrect and start over again until you finally take out the Ork's fully upgraded Stronghold.

There are whole different dimensions to this Dark Crusade game! I really like it.

--
||
--

Sometimes it doesn't work!

Sometimes, the Orks don't get fully capped, or the Necrons come out of the box overpowered.

But, when it does work, you can be the Necrons or the Tau, completely assured that you are going to win the campaign map or win the skirmish game, and then suddenly along come the swarms of fully capped and fully tiered Ork AI on a large map with their tanks and Squiggs, and suddenly you are just gone -- no troops and no base any more.

It's just a whole different game now!

I don't think that the Necrons should be 'standardized' in order to balance the game. I like the unpredictable nature of the game. I like how swarms of fully tiered Orks can just suddenly steam roll over the top of fully tiered Necrons and Restored Monoliths or storm over the top of the Tau. You think you are winning or going to win, and then you are suddenly dead and gone.

--
||
--

There are still problems with Dark Crusade that need to be ironed out. But, it's the other factions that need fixing, not the Tau or the Necrons or the Orks.

The IG and the Chaos are wimpy in Dark Crusade and need to be beefed up, or their AI fixed up better so that they are better opponents.

The Eldar are still wimpy, their buildings are paper, but if the Eldar can shroud or cloak, they can also swarm. And, swarms of Eldar are a really good match for the Tau, whereas Tau Pathfinders don't last very long searching for Eldar cloaked buildings, and a lone Tau Commander with stealth detection isn't a match for fully tiered and fully capped Eldar either. And, rushing Eldar commanders and/or Eldar honor guard can easily take down your Necron base early in the game, which often happens to me in the campaign.

The Space Marines turtle a lot in Dark Crusade. If the SM ever leave their base, or ever start deep striking Dreads and units into your Necron Base, it is soon gone. The problem with the Space Marines in Dark Crusade is that nine times out of ten, they never leave their base and/or they never build tanks. Or when their AI does leave their base, they never last long enough to get into your base, especially if they get the build orders that never build tanks or only build tanks in Tier 4 or some such. There's something wrong with the Space Marines in Dark Crusade that basically prevents them from every doing much of anything, nine times out of ten. But, that one time out of ten when the SM do play right, they can be very formidable, and completely wipe out the Necron's base in a matter of minutes.

--
||
--

Summary:

A Necron's base is rather wimpy and can easily be taken out by teleporting or deep-striking troops or hoards of Orks. And, a Restored Necron Monolith evaporates just as quickly under the focus of swarms of Orks or teleporting troops.

I don't know what I would do to improve or 'fix' Dark Crusade. It's the diversity and the complexity that makes it interesting. In fact, if Relic were to 'fix' it or make it more uniform or fair by eliminating features, I'm sure that a lot of us would complain -- if they started making the Necrons more like the other factions in order to achieve some sort of fairness or balance or normalcy.

The Necrons are interesting to play as, simply because they are so different. But, it's those radical differences that are introducing a lot of the so-called 'imbalances' into the game.

Still, it's possible in Skirmish games and in some Campaign games to be the Necrons, to be absolutely sure that you are going to win, and then suddenly find yourself facing swarms of Orks, or swarms of Eldar, or rows of Tau tanks, or deep-striking Space Marines, and your Necron caps suddenly are 0/0 and suddenly your base is gone.

A part of me likes that, even if it does feel 'imbalanced' at times. Suddenly your overpowered Necrons are just gone, and you have lost the game. Kind of cool.

I don't want Relic to break that while trying to fix or balance the game.

[Vorlock]

Right now, after having played necrons and against necrons (MANY TIMES) in team games (note team games, some 2v2's but mostly 4v4's and 3v3's) I'd say that necrons are very closed to balanced. Their slow speed is a gigantic pitfall in these games. Ressurection orb's usefullness is WAY diminished since a fully rezed army tends to vaporize quickly.

I'd say there are exactly 2, and only 2, things that should probably be changed.
1-The deleting warriors to then mass res to overcap. Thats just kinda cheap.
2-Flayed ones damage VS buildings (ONLY) needs to be lowered, probably significantly. Especially vs the HQ armor type.

I dont mind flayed ones being deepstruck into my base or in the midst of my troops. But giving them the ability to absolutely destroy my HQ in a very short time while ignore my army is a little too much for a deep striking, non-capped unit.

Aside from that I would actually give necrons a couple minor buffs too.

I'd set wraiths to 1 cap, since they are the primary detectors and are very fragile. Having an all wraith army now is possible but is a sure looser. Maybe if you had double of them it might be viable. Or, if thats too powerful, then reduce their damage so they remain a cheap, fast, harasser and detector while having more than 1 or 2 of them doesnt gimp your cap.

I'd add a little bit of squad cap to 2nd and 3rd monoliths. They are expensive, and its just kind bad when you cant get enough squad cap to build a decent army. Note, dont increase build time, just max squad cap.


Aside from the above, i think necrons are just about right. Of the 4 items i listed, I think the flayed ones building damage is really the only major problem. Of course, 1v1 might have other issues, but i wouldnt know.

[THE JUDICATOR]

i disagree with the flayed onese spam. the run out of morale before they even come out of the groung and no morale=no damage to other units bye the flayed ones. AND they move VERY slowly so u can outrun them if u think on how to avoid them.

Dextra have u ever used the bb before? obviously not because it sucks and i am surpirsed u killed anything with it. nowonder u lost that battle^^:screwy:

[Question]

i disagree with the flayed onese spam. the run out of morale before they even come out of the groung and no morale=no damage to other units bye the flayed ones. AND they move VERY slowly so u can outrun them if u think on how to avoid them.

Dextra have u ever used the bb before? obviously not because it sucks and i am surpirsed u killed anything with it. nowonder u lost that battle^^:screwy:

Are you aware that flayed ones have a morale damage aura?

[Jay_Davis]

Right now, after having played necrons and against necrons (MANY TIMES) in team games (note team games, some 2v2's but mostly 4v4's and 3v3's) I'd say that necrons are very closed to balanced. Their slow speed is a gigantic pitfall in these games. Ressurection orb's usefullness is WAY diminished since a fully rezed army tends to vaporize quickly.

I'd say there are exactly 2, and only 2, things that should probably be changed.
1-The deleting warriors to then mass res to overcap. Thats just kinda cheap.
2-Flayed ones damage VS buildings (ONLY) needs to be lowered, probably significantly. Especially vs the HQ armor type.

I dont mind flayed ones being deepstruck into my base or in the midst of my troops. But giving them the ability to absolutely destroy my HQ in a very short time while ignore my army is a little too much for a deep striking, non-capped unit.

Aside from that I would actually give necrons a couple minor buffs too.

I'd set wraiths to 1 cap, since they are the primary detectors and are very fragile. Having an all wraith army now is possible but is a sure looser. Maybe if you had double of them it might be viable. Or, if thats too powerful, then reduce their damage so they remain a cheap, fast, harasser and detector while having more than 1 or 2 of them doesnt gimp your cap.

I'd add a little bit of squad cap to 2nd and 3rd monoliths. They are expensive, and its just kind bad when you cant get enough squad cap to build a decent army. Note, dont increase build time, just max squad cap.


Aside from the above, i think necrons are just about right. Of the 4 items i listed, I think the flayed ones building damage is really the only major problem. Of course, 1v1 might have other issues, but i wouldnt know.

I'd agree with these and add a couple of more things.

Make the solal pulse area of effect equal to its grahpic size (right now it's bigger).

Reduce the max cap the ressurection orb can give you to 30 (without it the max is now 25).

Increase the max number of immortals in a sqaud to 8. They die rediculously fast right now and take forever to walk to where they are going.

Fix the pathing. This hurts Necrons (and any allies stuck behind the necrons) more than anyone else because of how slow everything is.

[timotheus]

Wait.

Necrons have balance issues? News to me.

Landspeeder rush, vespid + kroot rush, zerker rush, even ranger and reaper rush, own necrons admirably with minimum micro and no chance for the necron.

What are the necron issues again?

[Elferx]

The Eldar are still wimpy, their buildings are paper, but if the Eldar can shroud or cloak, they can also swarm. And, swarms of Eldar are a really good match for the Tau, whereas Tau Pathfinders don't last very long searching for Eldar cloaked buildings, and a lone Tau Commander with stealth detection isn't a match for fully tiered and fully capped Eldar either. And, rushing Eldar commanders and/or Eldar honor guard can easily take down your Necron base early in the game, which often happens to me in the campaign.

WRONG!!! Eldar buildings are buffed up in DarkCrusade if you don't realised. I knew it even before DC was released due to "top secret interview" regarding DC. :D

And yes, necrons requires a balanced issue. They are too weak in Tier 1 and too strong in Tier 2.
And lastly, the necron hero is not imba. I've killed him in a particular game 3 times over. LOL There is a method to do it.

[Hiro Protagonist]

What ever happened to that "3/4ths of the army dies everyone dissapears" thing for the necrons?

That'd shut alot of people up.

[Dragoncurry]

Amen.

[wnmnkh]

Lol

[Vampyre]

Chrimtonic:

The answer is that your friend is a bad player. He shows up with two banshee squads and a guardian squad as a rush, and you have built the summoing core and teir 1 warrior upgrade and 3 squads of warriors reinforced to 4 units each? How, exactly, is it that you are so far ahead of him when I *KNOW* from having timed it that he should be further along by then.

Fact is, I still haven't seen how Necrons can beat an early melee rush of say, Zerks. Banshee's *MIGHT* fall if you can outnumber them, but otherwise I doubt it. If you keep warriors from shooting, they'll fall to ANY melee oriented infantry, including Banshees.

In short, your friend isn't a good player. I don't find evidence of imbalance because your friend doesn't play as well as he should.

[Sameh]

Well most of the people that have no imbalance issues with necrons are either single player skirmish people
or 2:2 and more.For 1:1 it is quite a different story,
SPECIALY on the maps that are smaller and necro can come to your base quickly.

I dont have much to say for late game issues,but for early rush.Necrons are simply too much devastating and on most maps they can simply click their warriors against your base and u ll be anihilated.

and those who play 1:1 constanty will know what i mean.

free warriors( slow yes ) hit the same when moving,their hero teleports and can disturb your moving back and forward forces.
because his army is free,he have money to rebuild any loses (if any).

YES people are saying this and this is good to counter bla bla.right,maybe later in the game,but for now early in the game,u are just destroyed.

i just dont see it balanced that they ignore what every race has to do for income ( capping locations ),
and with 4 or 5 of them capped is enough.
because 2 are ussually at the base,he has enough to destroy u fast in the game.

some are saying that u can rush them with vehicles ( SM for example )
DO U EVEN KNOW WHAT U ARE SAYING? rush is not something u need to go to tear 2.

i am saddened that most of the players that said necrons are fine are either skirmish or campaing noobs complaining about AI,or late game suckers with tank supports.

dark crusade as it is now is greatly imbalanced and those who cant see it are just blind.Bdw i rather have one hero having abilities then 3 heroes like SM having non ( teleport,slow jetpack etc.. )
i stopped playing darkcrusade vs necrons until they ll balance this.

i wont say much more because most of it was already said.

[your_neighbour]

some are saying that u can rush them with vehicles ( SM for example )
DO U EVEN KNOW WHAT U ARE SAYING? rush is not something u need to go to tear 2.

I agree with Sameh. Some people who haven't actually fought necrons during 1v1 automatch just come up with some impossible theories. Necron is just a balance diasater.

Apart from Necrons, I am very satisified with other races' balances.

[Shinova]

What ever happened to that "3/4ths of the army dies everyone dissapears" thing for the necrons?

That'd shut alot of people up.

No, then they'd bitch about something else about Necrons, and then Relic nerfes the Necrons into oblivion and then they bitch about Tau, and then they nerf Tau, and when all is done and every race is a shell of their former selves, then the people will bitch about every race getting nerfed.

[MoschBoy]

strangely enough i dont see ppl struggeling vs my necrons - even if i (try) to rush them. but then again, its my 1st day online with DC (YAY!!!we euros now have it too!!!).

btw, i know you are all bitching about necrons, but their commander - resurrection (you know, after he is killed and you build him again) is really stupid. any ideas for that? or how do you deal with it?

[n0z3k1ll3r]

btw, i know you are all bitching about necrons, but their commander - resurrection (you know, after he is killed and you build him again) is really stupid. any ideas for that? or how do you deal with it?As the Necron player, or as their opponent?

[Evan_gelion]

The only honest to god thing that's wrong about Necrons is deleting units to bypass the unit cap, honestly. Pretty sure that cap is there for a reason, and it's not for people to have to resort to building, deleting, and rebuilding units to bypass the number that I'm pretty sure is there for... balance purposes.

[MoschBoy]

As the Necron player, or as their opponent?as necron player.

naturally i dont leave the corpse willingly in /near an enemy base, but it happens. and if it happens....well, they just position a rocket turret or some heavy guns right next to it - with the result that i cant teleport him out (rockets) or that i get a commander with HP in yellow.

is there any hope they ll just make him like the other commanders in this aspect ?

[Elferx]

No, then they'd bitch about something else about Necrons, and then Relic nerfes the Necrons into oblivion and then they bitch about Tau, and then they nerf Tau, and when all is done and every race is a shell of their former selves, then the people will bitch about every race getting nerfed.

I so totally agree. That was what happened to Eldar. Instead of balancing Eldar in WA, they exiled Eldar. Afterwhich many many people start to bitch again and they ressurrect Eldar.

It's just human nature. I advice relic not to destroy races for the sake of majority whiners but instead BALANCE races.

[Nucleous]

I think it cause crons are so resilient that they require less micro.. Therefore the less skilled play better.

this is why everyones upset.. But there is a spambuild for lots of races.

Mass Warriors

Zerker spam

Speeder spam

vespid + whatever (kroot or FW)

[Arsonide]

Well most of the people that have no imbalance issues with necrons are either single player skirmish people
or 2:2 and more.For 1:1 it is quite a different story,
SPECIALY on the maps that are smaller and necro can come to your base quickly.

I dont have much to say for late game issues,but for early rush.Necrons are simply too much devastating and on most maps they can simply click their warriors against your base and u ll be anihilated.

and those who play 1:1 constanty will know what i mean.

free warriors( slow yes ) hit the same when moving,their hero teleports and can disturb your moving back and forward forces.
because his army is free,he have money to rebuild any loses (if any).

YES people are saying this and this is good to counter bla bla.right,maybe later in the game,but for now early in the game,u are just destroyed.

i just dont see it balanced that they ignore what every race has to do for income ( capping locations ),
and with 4 or 5 of them capped is enough.
because 2 are ussually at the base,he has enough to destroy u fast in the game.

some are saying that u can rush them with vehicles ( SM for example )
DO U EVEN KNOW WHAT U ARE SAYING? rush is not something u need to go to tear 2.

i am saddened that most of the players that said necrons are fine are either skirmish or campaing noobs complaining about AI,or late game suckers with tank supports.

dark crusade as it is now is greatly imbalanced and those who cant see it are just blind.Bdw i rather have one hero having abilities then 3 heroes like SM having non ( teleport,slow jetpack etc.. )
i stopped playing darkcrusade vs necrons until they ll balance this.

i wont say much more because most of it was already said.
Uh if you don't have a force capable of killing the lord by the time he is (finally) built, then you are doing something wrong. It takes a LONG time for the necron to get a lord and three necron squads built, especially if as you say - he is ignoring capping points. That is critical to getting over one squad out of the monolith.

[Question]

The only honest to god thing that's wrong about Necrons is deleting units to bypass the unit cap, honestly. Pretty sure that cap is there for a reason, and it's not for people to have to resort to building, deleting, and rebuilding units to bypass the number that I'm pretty sure is there for... balance purposes.

I find statements like this rather funny.

It is balanced that one race can counter T2 vehicles without going T2 themselves(like what -every other race- has to do?)

It is balanced that their basic unit is more or less the equavelent of T3 HARDCAPPED units in T2? No......its probably better. T2 warriors are like better versions of T3 terminators. T1 warriors outshooting T1.5/T2 units that cost at least 3 times as much is also balanced?

It is balanced that your hardcapped T4 tanks at 2 per race get INSTANTLY taken out by lord destroyers AND TURNED AGAINST YOU? Who thought up the weird idea that one could not only effectively insta-kill T4 hardcapped tanks......but use them against your force?

Solar pulse with 40 diameter and 1 min recharge is balanced? Really?

Flayed one morale DPS 960 for a full squad, not factoring in morale armor or regen, is perfectly balanced for the cost and cap and deepstrike abilities?

[Arsonide]

You're overexaggerating, Necrons can be beaten...easily. Grab some vehicles and start mowing them down. One killa can got into my base the other day, the first thing it did was put a saw through my summoning core (It was AI controlled), which killed it instantly. I was on the other side of the map...so I had to run back to my base. By the time I got there that one killa can almost killed my HQ, and it took out a ton of my warriors, which by that time took FOREVER to build, even with 100% build time bonus.

[Francis_Mamba]

Below, these findings are related to Skirmish and LAN.

Surviving till you get yourself some Speeders?

I'd like to see you try...

By the beginning of Tier 2 all you see are fields of dead SM and railgun shots in your base with more of these "terminators" than you can readily count...
Its the only damn race which can destroy SM tac fast enough 1 on 1 with their NW without your guys inflicting even half the casualties to the squad.

Ok so you train them Assault Marines, you got your 220 req. gone and 55 for each, but here comes the great Lord Necron with 1800 some health and makes a kebab out of your expensive assaults.

So... you can't fight him in close combat, you can't fight him by running away because those damn railguns rip you apart nonetheless and marines seem to shoot at the sky or elsewhere while on the run (i.e almost no damage).

The next thing you know while trying to keep your force up is the fact that to gather that 200 precious req. for Machine Cult is a mission if your cheapest troops are 45 to reinforce and die like IG trying to fight a titan in close combat.

And ok... let's say you're smart enough to survive till you're in Tier 3...

I've had 3 tac's, greys, force com., two dreads and a chaplain obliterated by some 3 squads of NW a Nec lord and 2 tomb spyders in less than what... 30 seconds. I mean ok... maybe my force wasn't big enough (the way i understand balance is on full upgrades and on full unit and vehicle cap you are supposed to have the same chances in destroying the enemy as he has while he has the biggest most upgraded army vs. you, that is balance). But I haven't killed even 20% of his force.

Rush isnt a way out. A balance is reached when you with the full possiblities exploited of your army have the same opportunity of destroying the enemy army with its full possibilities reached. Why? well lets take a look, 3v3 SM/IG/Tau vs N/N/N in Bloodshed Alley... 1st necron destroyed, 3/4 of the map owned by me and my allies.. and then cometh thee Nightbringerth or two and an army you'd be able to build only if you had maybe half the damn map and rolls over until my and my buddies total anihilation, nothing stops it.

I dont mind that "necrons are meant to be fearsome lumps of walking undead metal thingys" but hey... Marines are supposed to be fearsome too, so it aint an excuse. Besides if we judge just by fluff and tabletop then my friends this is not for a base-economy-army RTS realted issue. This is for one o dem turn-based or what-you-start-with-is-what-you-get (like Ground Control) games.

As a way to test my theory try winning as SM vs. necrons on Rhean Floodlands (i believe) in 3v3 in Skirmish.

[EDIT] Question, I agree wif you.
Also, is it just me or are the people protecting necrons play necrons themselves? or at least 80% of them? :) As long as logic goes their arguments should be highly subjective.

[Arsonide]

I don't play Necrons, I play against Necrons as Chaos, and they get slaughtered by Berserkers. Berserkers move three times as fast as a warrior, warriors suck at melee combat, and berserkers are immune to morale damage. I seriously don't see a balance problem with them as you do, when I play they lose just as often as any other player does. Barring anything else, look at simple wins/losses. Necrons have just as many of both as the other races.

I can see your point as Space Marine perhaps...Space Marines are a highly ranged based race, and Necrons weakness lies in their melee, barring Flayed Ones, which are too slow moving to really factor in. Tau are a ranged race too, but they have Kroot to take out the Necron.

[Francis_Mamba]

Hmm, maybe Im not skilled enough (Played DOW since it came out but only ever LAN or Skirmish) but it seems I've used every tactic in my arsenal... I just can't survive till Tier 2... and even if I do I spend so much resources survivng early on that when the necs. fish out their your-avg.-military-parade army I have nothing to counter it.

*cries in his little pillow*

:cry:

[Question]

You're overexaggerating, Necrons can be beaten...easily. Grab some vehicles and start mowing them down. One killa can got into my base the other day, the first thing it did was put a saw through my summoning core (It was AI controlled), which killed it instantly. I was on the other side of the map...so I had to run back to my base. By the time I got there that one killa can almost killed my HQ, and it took out a ton of my warriors, which by that time took FOREVER to build, even with 100% build time bonus.

Vehicles do not work. You need T2 to get vehicles. T1.5 warriors counter vehicles splendidly. Your landspeeders will die without ever getting their cost back. And while you are trying to tech you die.

That game is completely based on the bugged armor of the core.

Oh btw did i mention you cant tie up warriors because they can walk around and shoot with full accuracy?

[Jay_Davis]

Well, I mentioned what I though should be done to Necrons. It still leaves them with some pretty big holes, Necrons are going to be somewhat one dimentional no matter what is done to them because that's their nature.

For those who think they are not blind, I know you are going to continue whining no matter what the facts. We've seen it before. Sorry that none of you can actually exectute any strategies that work against Necrons. That's not the game's problem, it is yours.

Boy do I have to laugh when I see people say everything is OK except for Necrons. The most broken things have nothing to do with Necrons. But, oh yeah, you are probably taking advantage of those, so it's OK.

[Evan_gelion]

It is balanced that one race can counter T2 vehicles without going T2 themselves(like what -every other race- has to do?)-

If you factor in the really bizarre econ and the fact that said 'Vehicles' (Heavy Destroyers) aren't reached until Tier 3, pretty much... Of course, if you want to put Heavy Destoyers in the second Tier, be my guest...


It is balanced that their basic unit is more or less the equavelent of T3 HARDCAPPED units in T2? No......its probably better. T2 warriors are like better versions of T3 terminators. T1 warriors outshooting T1.5/T2 units that cost at least 3 times as much is also balanced?

First of all, making Econ comparisons is damn difficult when you consider that Necrons only use energy and perform differently. I also am not willing to believe that Tier 2 Warriors are better than Termies without evidence. They're nasty but I think that's pretty ridiclious (unless you mean pure shooting, I suppose, but they're certainly not going to hold their own against Assault Termies, or even the normal ones jumping into melee--and yet we're talking about 3 vs 2, so it's irrelevent.)

Oh yeah, and this isn't exactly unique--Grey Knights kill a Daemon Prince. Tier 2 unit, meet Character. Hmm.


It is balanced that your hardcapped T4 tanks at 2 per race get INSTANTLY taken out by lord destroyers AND TURNED AGAINST YOU? Who thought up the weird idea that one could not only effectively insta-kill T4 hardcapped tanks......but use them against your force?


Sort of falls under the "Keep an eye on the Daemon Prince while fighting SM because the Tier 2 Grey Knights will murder him." amirite? Oh, and it's called a Special Ability--is it fair that your Tier 3 SM character gets to call in a massive damage AOE every 2 minutes or so that can practically obtilerate buildings and there's nothing you can do about it? I don't know, seems like a "Special ability" to me.


Solar pulse with 40 diameter and 1 min recharge is balanced? Really?


Nah, probably not.


Flayed one morale DPS 960 for a full squad, not factoring in morale armor or regen, is perfectly balanced for the cost and cap and deepstrike abilities?

They also move ridicliously slow once they're out and can be focused fired to all hell if you just... Oh, I don't know, run away. (Yes, i Know, Solar Pulse. It sucks, I try to adapt.)

I'm not saying there's not some tweaks that could happen, but the honest-to-god broken part is the unit cap thing IMO. But it's okay, go ahead and act like smug. I'm only... agreeing something needs to be done.

[Jay_Davis]

As Evan_gelion mentioned, it is tough to compare Necron on a cost or tier basis because they work a little differently.

The way to think about Necrons is that they do indeed have two resources: power and time. Because the time to do things changes based on a number of factors and the fact that only their HQ (monolith) can build things, time is something the Necron must manage properly to win.

[Lazerguy]

This is just a friendly reminder for you all that forgot:

While other races have expensive units and capping squads that all cost something and allow for an optimized build to give you an advantage, Necrons don't. Instead they have the most restricting factor to their expansion in the game, one that NOBODY can get around. Time. As Necrons I MUST cap SPs or I won't build fast enough to combat the enemy and early rushes hit Necrons real hard. Without Obelisks it doesn't matter how much power try to get. Without Obelisks it makes absolutely no difference how power I have. Without getting my build speed bonuses fast I'm dead the moment I hit the launch button for automatch.

Of course the flipside of this is that once I get to 40/60%, my build speed gets very good and becomes the only limiting factor for my army of doom. Rushes can't assault me effectively when I have two Warrior squads and NL together (Although that means no early harrassment, which is a fair price to pay to protect my base). Power ceases to be any real concern unless I go heavy on Destroyers and FlayedOnes, or my gens get FUBARed... Ressurection orb means I won't have to pay for any more warrior reinforcements if I'm on the ball after tier 2, ever. Until the match is over, Necrons get better and better econ-wise as time goes on.

"Freight train" is a very good anology for the Necron economy indeed.

[Hiro Protagonist]

No, then they'd bitch about something else about Necrons, and then Relic nerfes the Necrons into oblivion and then they bitch about Tau, and then they nerf Tau, and when all is done and every race is a shell of their former selves, then the people will bitch about every race getting nerfed.
Then simply quicken the ressurection ability to keep them on their toes. Maybe a sort of disposer building to throw in your unwanted so it doesn't count against your numbers.

[Evan_gelion]

I actually think Laser touched on something interesting that makes balancing them fairly difficult. It's not just time that's the problem, it's how Necron Econ operates.

One unit must serve basically three independent roles. First, it has to cap the points. At least 5, but in all honesty Obelisks are not particularly strong and can get blasted if you're not careful, so a few isn't bad. However, Necrons get NOTHING from actual points--it has to be topped with an Obelisk. What that means is the Necron player has to spend a bit more time than others, since it's almost an immediete neccessity after capping a point (This isn't like any other race--you don't have to throw up an LP to get a value out of taking it right than and there, for Necrons, an uncap point is literally wasted time.)

If that's not enough, that unit is the same one that techs up. That's pretty standard. Only there's one other thing.

Since resources mean nothing to Necrons, everything--reinforcing your troops, characters, tech upgrades, everything requires energy. The humble drone must ALSO build up those fast to get the ball rolling. Sure, this is somewhat like other races, but we're not talking making sure you have 1-2 generators early, we're talking enough to be competitive with your opponent, who is capping everything he can in the meantime to speed-boost himself into Tier 2. You need to get the full % AND have lots of energy to spare. while still balancing it with quick teching because, as someone pointed out--Necrons are like a freight train, but they are TERRIBLE in the early game, so the faster, the better. Oh, and don't forget that early game Necrons must rely on a ridiciously frail unit (Wraith) to uncap or else have ANOTHER builder dedicated to following them around and slowing down enemy econ.

What this means is that the opening for Necrons is stretched very thin--you have to veeeeery carefully balance having enough drones to get this all done fast enough with building troops to defend--who can not cap OR decap and slowly plod around the battlefield, looking for things to kill. Later on, it's not an issue--freight train, again. But early in the game things can feel very, very dicey. If you were to tip the early game balance, you could literally ruin the army just like that...

[Jay_Davis]

Add to the list that those builder scarabs are also your primary detector unit, so, most of the time, you need some with your army too.

[ThetaOrion]

You're overexaggerating, Necrons can be beaten...easily.

--

That's part of the joy about the Necrons being overpowered -- it's such a thrill to take them down or to see them go down, when it happens.

Their Necron Lord resurrection is brutal, especially when they are all resurrecting in your base. They can go from 0/0 on their caps after all being wiped out to 40/10 on their caps in a matter of seconds just by a Necron Lord resurrection.

But, the Necrons can be beaten.

1) Their base is their weak point, and easily destroyed by a vehicle rush or a hoard of Orks.

2) The Necrons are slow. That's their next weakness.

3) A single fully capped army of Orks can just simply mow over the top of fully capped Tau and fully capped Necrons simultaneously. The Orks are brutal against the Tau, Necrons, and Eldar, especially when fully capped and fully tiered Orks find your base.

Now for the Necron Revenge:

A) I have seen just a full cap of Ork tanks take out everything that my Necrons have, a full cap of tanks and troops in a matter of seconds, yet I have been able to bring all the Necron troops back in a matter of seconds after resurrecting the Necron Lord and deep striking in Flayed Ones, and suddenly my cap on Necron troops is 40 where it was zero only a minute before and 10 or so cap or population a second before Resurrecting my Necron Lord and teleporting in a fresh batch of Flayed Ones, and then casting the Resurrection spell on the piles of the dead that were parked around the Ork Stronghold. 25 Necrons to 0 in a matter of seconds thanks to the Ork superiority, and then 0 to 10 Flayed Ones in a minute while waiting for the Necron Lord to resurrect, and then from a cap of 10 to a cap of 40 after casting the Resurrection Spell. All to be dead and gone a minute later under the superior Ork melee, only to start the process all over again, until the Ork Stronghold is gone.

B) It all balances out in the end. The Necrons can be beat, if you can rush and destroy their base in time. But you have some really nasty ways to get even as the Necrons if you choose to do so. It is often a race against the clock, sometimes, to see who gets the other base eliminated first. If the Necrons or Orks are protected on their flanks, they can really get going, and soon be a real force to reckon with. Necrons are very weak against the Ork melee and the Ork forces, but if you can take down the Ork Strongholds before the Orks take down your base and Restored Monolith, the Necrons can still win. It balances out in the end. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. But, a lot of the fun of it is seeing if you can pull off a win against the Necrons or against a fully capped and fully tiered hoard of Orks. It isn't always easy to do.

[Arsonide]

Vehicles do not work. You need T2 to get vehicles. T1.5 warriors counter vehicles splendidly. Your landspeeders will die without ever getting their cost back. And while you are trying to tech you die.

That game is completely based on the bugged armor of the core.

Oh btw did i mention you cant tie up warriors because they can walk around and shoot with full accuracy?
Actually I tried doing that this morning, walking away from units while firing at them - it failed, utterly failed. The units attacking were too fast, they closed to melee distance and my warriors AI took over and started melee attacking them (even in ranged stance).

[Shinova]

Hmm, maybe Im not skilled enough (Played DOW since it came out but only ever LAN or Skirmish) but it seems I've used every tactic in my arsenal... I just can't survive till Tier 2... and even if I do I spend so much resources survivng early on that when the necs. fish out their your-avg.-military-parade army I have nothing to counter it.

*cries in his little pillow*

:cry:

Have you tried ASM spam?

Get them meltas too, if you can.

[Lazerguy]

Actually I tried doing that this morning, walking away from units while firing at them - it failed, utterly failed. The units attacking were too fast, they closed to melee distance and my warriors AI took over and started melee attacking them (even in ranged stance).

This may be due to the horrid, horrid pathing code of DoW resulting in the Warriors engaging melee sometimes. Try hot-keying individual squads and constantly give one move orders, it should work better.

[MoschBoy]

necrons really do DAMN good in tier 1 (just found out), but 2 things can cost you the day: 1. early cc units outsquading you (especially when they are 2-3x faster than the NW) or if you forget to tech.
personally i consider flayed ones imba, but on the other hand.... without them, necron tier 2 would be horrible, when it comes down to dealing with cc units.
especially jump troops with high building dmg are a pain (SB, raptors, ASM) and can effectively bleed you dry.

[Francis_Mamba]

2 Shinova

Bro, read what I posted... I said the Assaulties don't work for crap, even when you rush em, the necron lord makes a kebab out of em.

2 every1

And vehicle rush dont work either, because as I mentioned before you can't survive till you can actually get a vehicle at least for SM.

And "bitching-about-necrons-till-they're-nerfed" isn't really what's happening, besides this post is a constructive analysis of the overpowered new race. I say owerpowered because not only can you barely defend yourself but the ONLY way to defeat this race is if you 1)rush them (try doing that on bigger maps) 2)building vehicles (unless we live in some wonderland super-vanilla DoW vehicles are expensive, its hard to get to them, and its meant to be so because they provide the COUNTER to OTHER VEHICLES not the Tier 1 infantry as is the case with necrons... you have to be kidding... make tier 2/3 VEHICLES to counter tier 1 INFANTRY.. and you call that balance.) and finally 3)some how having a very stupid opponent who dosen't know what he's doing (even then teleporting-flesh-and-morale-eating robots don need much tactics.. hell just move your leader into their base and deepstrike... no problem!)


No offence to anyone meant, but seriously, sometimes I refuse to play DC just because of the fact that even though I used every single strategy it is just simply impossible to fight on even basis with necrons... to defeat them my SM have to be 1 tier above.

Peace.

[warhawk08]

I've been thinking that maybe one way to balance the necron is to simply increase the build time for warriors. This would give other races, particularly the eldar, more time before 2 full squads of warriors plus a lord show up and start tearing your base apart. It might also give the necron more insentive to care about caping more than 2 points.

Part of the bugger with balancing these guys is that something will have to be done about the zerk and landspeeder rush as well.

[EvilDM]

Increasing the warrior build time even more would make necrons very rushable.

[Schlamiel]

The only reason why peple, including me keep LS and Zerk rushing, is because, there is no other good strategies against the necrons. They are very unbalanced you have a window of 5 mins, if you haventalmost killed them before that, its and uphill battle that you will lose 9 out of 10 times.

How fair is it to have a race that you have to rush every time, just to stand a chance. There are so many threads with so many arguments explaning why Necs need to be nerfed. And not one thread, with one good argument, why they shouldent. Instead we get a lot of necro-fanboy talk about how we just dont exploit the Necs weak points.

Well guess what, necs are only weak in 3-5 mins..thats it. I am so looking forward to see them getting beat with a bat of nerf. Until they are balanced.

[Shinova]

2 Shinova

Bro, read what I posted... I said the Assaulties don't work for crap, even when you rush em, the necron lord makes a kebab out of em.

How many squads of assault marines are you rushing with and against how many warrior squads + lord?

And I suspect you are making the #1 mistake when fighting against Necrons: fighting on their terms.



I've noticed a common thread of thinking that persists in vs Necron discussions: that you have to fight their forces when you see them. Against any other race this works, but not against Necrons because pound-for-pound they will beat anything you have (except if you're Tau, thanks to snare traps).

Don't. Harass their forces, but concentrate mainly on their base. One turret isn't going to stop even a couple of assault marines.

[Tak]

I'm with Shinova on this one. Do necrons have some issues? Yes. But their weak point is their econ. They use energy and time. Destroy their energy, and time works against them. Even if your ASM squad/guardsmen in chimera/raptors/flyboyz/whatever do nothing but wipe out obelisks and power generators and then die before you can jump them out, you've ultimately won that battle.

[MoschBoy]

necrons have a VERY weak economy...yes, believe it; even though their main combat unit comes "free" (apart from build time), they need reinforcement - which cost energy; as necron you cant tech and mass troops at the same time. and they have only 1 building that can produce units.

i find myself again and again in situations where i need a turret just to survive a rush, and when i attack and suffer heavy losses, its most often gg...because your eco rarely cant provide reinforcemnts AND tech at the same time.

apart from flayed ones necrons are ok i think...and though flayed ones are a bit OP, they are needed....cc troops and strong ranged units own necrons.

[ThetaOrion]

Something I wrote to a friend about the Necrons and my Necron gameplay:

Yes, the skirmish mode in Dark Crusade is severely messed up. The plain vanilla Dark Crusade AI in incomplete or unfinished.

Half the time the Space Marines never build a tank in skirmish mode. But, sometimes they do, and when they do, the SM do some real damage. There were dreads and landspeeders there in that SM faction last night, iirc -- maybe that was another game. Too many games to remember -- and sometimes I mix up the campaign games with the skirmish games I have played. But, I have never seen an AI produced SM LandRaider uber titan unit in the Campaign or Skirmish mode either, in Dark Crusade.

Sometimes the Orks never build any tanks, but they did one time on that Testing Grounds map when I was the Tau with Necron and Chaos army AI allies, iirc, and the Orks got fully tiered and were putting out squiggs and had one of every tank, and they wiped us all out in a matter of minutes, once they found my Tau and my Necron AI ally's base simultaneously. The Orks had enough to take us both down simultaneously, even though my AI ally had a Restored Monolith and my Tau were fully capped and fully tiered at the time.

When it works, it's a whole other game. The Space Marines were working last night, with their infantry spam. The only way I could beat them was to destroy their Strongholds. I couldn't beat them as the Necrons in a straight fight -- well, I almost did after multiple resurrections right in the middle of them. But, the Necron troops and tanks are very very weak, and only last a matter of seconds against fully tiered and fully capped enemy AI troops.

On the Morriah Coast map, I got into a game, where the Necrons enemy AI started rampaging. Often the AI in the middle (of 3vs3 skirmish mode games) that is protected on its flanks actually gets going, and it's a whole other game. Anyway, the Necrons in the middle wiped out my Ork and Chaos allies, and I was alone as the Tau, against fully capped and fully tiered Necrons that held half the map, and SM and IG enemy AI that did nothing but show up once in awhile with tier 1 troops.

Anyway, back to my Morriah Coast game, the Tau don't have resurrection -- they are a pure slug fest the whole way -- and I held out for an hour at the hard setting as the Tau against the repeated Necron invasions. I could never take territory, and I was new to the game at the time, but I could hold out indenitely thanks to the map. I could have gone another hour if I hadn't tried to take and hold additional territory. But, I was finally getting overwhelmed and losing ground to the Necrons after an hour, and I gave up and surrendered.

I have used the Chaos multiple times as AI allies and enemies, and they never build a single tank -- well after dozens of usages, I saw a single lone defiler in skirmish mode right before they went down late in the game. Chaos and IG always lose in Dark Crusade skirmish mode play, and in the Campaign as well. I have seen a single lone chimera or a single lone hellhound from the IG from time to time, but I have never seen Kasrkin or Ogrins or Baneblades from the IG AI in skirmish mode in Dark Crusade. It's always guardsmen squads and Commissars. I don't think the plain vanilla DC AI can make these higher tier things for the IG and Chaos. I don't even think the Chaos AI can do a Bezerker spam in the plain vanilla DC AI.

It's going to be a completely different game, if Thud gets everything activated that he can activate in the AI Skirmish Mod. When that happens, the Necrons are going to be severely handicapped and underpowered. Fully capped and fully tiered Orks can kill off fully capped Necrons in a matter of seconds, and only resurrection can bring the Necrons back in a timely fashion. And, then the Necrons are all gone again thirty seconds later. As the Necrons, you have no chance of touching their fully capped and fully tiered Ork troops or Ork buildings before you are dead and gone, just like it was with those Space Marines last night, with the SM infantry spam. And resurrecting right on top of their Strongholds and destroying their Strongholds is the only way to beat them while playing as the Necrons. The fully capped Necrons are very very weak -- especially if the Eldar, Orks, or SM start hoarding and rampaging, and get fully capped and fully tiered.

There are no hoards of IG or Chaos right now, but if Thud fixes them for the AI skirmish Mod and gives them a real AI, the Necron could find themselves severely weak against fully tiered and fully capped IG and Chaos as well. It will be a whole other game.

Even as it is, with the plain vanilla skirmish AI half broken and not tiering, it is a completely different game right now with the Necrons, than it was before. An AI that never produces tanks (except for the Necron AI) is also a whole other experience that we have never experienced before in Dawn of War either. When that bug is fixed and the other AI factions besides the Orks can all fully cap and fully tier, the Necrons are going to be so weak that they will be going down almost each and every game. It will be a whole other game. The Necrons are really actually quite weak, the way they are now -- it's just that none of the other AI factions (except the Orks, and Necrons of course) are ever tiering or fully capping in plain vanilla skirmish mode play. A bug in Relic's AI, if ever there was one. Once that is fixed, the fortunes of the Necrons will completely change.